PhonePe launches its own Indus Appstore in India

By Gloria Mathias

PhonePe has announced the consumer launch of its Indus Appstore at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. The Indus Appstore allows Indian consumers to download over 2 lakh mobile apps and games across 45 categories.

Indus Appstore is PhonePe’s attempt at creating a more competitive and localised mobile app store economy for India. The Indus Appstore allows Indian consumers to download over 2 lakh mobile apps and games, across 45 categories. Users will be able to discover these apps conveniently in 12 Indian languages, thereby catering to 95% of Indians’ language preferences. The app store also offers a brand-new short video-based discovery feature, to make new app discovery more engaging for consumers.

In a global first move, Indus Appstore allows app and game developers to choose any 3rd-party payment gateway for in-app billing, and they will not be charged any commission if they use an external payment gateway.

Later, Indus will also provide its own in-app billing and catalogue solutions, but these will remain strictly optional for app developers. Further, to accelerate developer registrations, Indus is offering zero listing fees to developers for one year.

The timing of Indus Appstore’s launch gains more relevance given the recent clamour from the Indian startup ecosystem for more free market competition in the mobile app store space.

Sameer Nigam, CEO and Founder of PhonePe, added, “Indus Appstore challenges the status quo, ushering in an era of more healthy competition in the mobile app marketplace, which in turn should help create a more democratic and vibrant Indian digital ecosystem. Indus Appstore embodies our commitment to building a truly inclusive digital ecosystem where every Indian user feels at home.”

For developers, the Indus App Store provides a fair and level playing field to list, distribute, & promote their products in the Indian app ecosystem. It provides a self-publishing platform, localization services, multiple tools to monitor and grow their apps, and dedicated 24×7 customer support.