The Race for “Super-App”

Hey, tell me.

What comes to your mind when I talk about the Ambanis, the Tatas, and the Adanis? Let me guess. For Ambani’s – it is their petrochemical business and telecom business, for Tatas – the trust that brand yields and their diversified salt-to-software conglomerate and for Adani’s – apart from their entities soaring stock prices it is their ports business, energy, and airports that come to our mind.

Undoubtedly, they were running a race to gain the top spot in their respective field but, now the time is changing.

Today, these three vintage business houses are running the same race – the race to build a ‘super App’. Yes, you heard it right. The foundation stone for India’s Digital Revolution was laid by Amazon, Flipkart, and later aided by Government’s fiscal policy like Demonetisation and Jio’s cheap data plans and in the end, Covid turned out to be the perfect catalyst for the entire digital revolution.

We have many start-ups that have entered the prestigious Unicorn Club while others have raced past to get listed on the Indian bourses. However, it gets more interesting when we see even the traditional Indian Business Houses are prepping to disrupt the digital space. And reports suggest that conglomerates are not looking for building an application that offers singular services to a specific set of consumers, but they are going a step further to build the one-stop application for all consumers. They call it the ‘Super App’.

Super App is nothing but an application that offers a plethora of services in one single application. It will offer services from messaging services, payments personal loans, travel bookings to Food Delivery, movie tickets, online shopping, and many more. Tata is leading the Super App with ‘TataNeu’. The app is already in the beta testing phase used by its employees internally. TataNeu integrates Tata’s strong offline presence with its newly acquired business. It already has brands like Titan, Tanishq, Starbucks, Croma, West-Side under its offline basket, and now with investments in Big Basket, 1mg, CureFit, and many other start-ups, the official launch of TataNeu is not far away.

Even the Ambanis are not behind. Reliance has a very strong offline presence and online presence through Reliance Retail, JioMart, and Ajio. Reliance has inked strategic deals with Microsoft and Google. Reliance has also inked a deal with Facebook to develop the app using the WhatsApp platform and leverage WhatsApp’s large user base. Reliance’s recent acquisitions of JustDial, NetMeds, UrbanLadder, and Kishore Biyani led Future Group itself to speak about how serious it is in developing the SuperApp. Though the Future Group deal is sub-judice it gave a sneak-peak into Reliance’s ambitious super App project.

This gets more interesting when reports suggest that even Adani has now entered into the foray of developing the super App. Adani has set up a division called Adani Digital labs whose main responsibility is to combine and offer a host of services to Adani’s 400 Mn mix of consumers that engage at multiple levels with an Adani forum or service including Adani airport, Adani Wilmar, Adani total gas, Adani electricity, among others. Adani calls its small division “Ferrari” of the digital world. Adani has also picked up a small stake in travel booking company, ClearTrip and CSC Grameen e-store that promotes digital ordering and delivery in rural areas.

The race has become more interesting with Adani entering it. Although it has a lot to catch up on as Tata and Reliance are already in the process of launching it officially.
However, mind you, this strategy of developing the super app is not new. It has already been adopted by WeChat in China. WeChat not only allows exchanging of messages but can also be used to take out the loan. Commerce did through mini-apps that WeChat lets other developers build on its platform reached a staggering $240 billion last year alone, more than double from the previous year.

Even in India, the Tatas, the Ambanis, and the Adanis are not the only ones because there is one entity that has re-invented itself time and again by loading up its offerings to its consumers and now is on its way to getting listed soon. It is none other than – our beloved PayTm. PayTM already offers various services including payment gateways, air ticket bookings, movie tickets, and many more. It is currently the leading payments platform in India with a GMV of Rs 403 Lakh crore as of Mar2021. It has 85.49 million monthly active users as of Mar20.

So, Indian consumers, Get ready for the SuperApp ride. The future for all of us looks like uninstalling many several apps and installing only one app that will offer loads of services.

Until next time…