PhonePe Unveils Indus Appstore: A Game-Changer in India's Digital Journey

Written by PR Newswire

Indus Appstore is an Android app store, offering app discovery in 12 Indian languages
No app listing fees for one year, until April 1st 2025, for developers
Developers will be free to use any 3rd-party payment gateway of their choice

NEW DELHI, Feb. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- PhonePe, today announced the consumer launch of its Indus Appstore, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Indus Appstore is PhonePe's attempt at creating a more competitive and localized mobile app store economy for India, which is already the largest mobile apps download market globally. The event was attended by a large number of startup founders and tech industry leaders, reflecting the significance of this launch for India's thriving digital ecosystem.

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. At a later date, Indus will also provide its own in-app billing and catalog 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 clamor from the Indian startup ecosystem for more free market competition in the mobile app store space.

Sameer Nigam, CEO and Founder 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."

Indus Appstore is available for download at ^[1]https://www.indusappstore.com ^[2].

About Indus Appstore:

Indus Appstore is a native Android-based mobile app store, designed to fulfill the localized and cultural needs of Indian consumers. With an extensive array of categories it seeks to provide users a localized, contextual and a personalized experience. Indus Appstore is available in English and 12 Indian languages, which allows users to explore the app store in their preferred language.

For developers, Indus Appstore 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 along with a dedicated 24×7 customer support.

About PhonePe:

PhonePe Group is India's leading fintech company. Its flagship product, the PhonePe digital payments app, was launched in Aug 2016. In just 7 years, the company has scaled rapidly to become India's leading consumer payments app with 510+ million registered users and a digital payments acceptance network of 38 million merchants. PhonePe also processes over 220 million daily transactions with an annualized Total Payment Value (TPV) of USD 1.4 Trillion.

On the back of its leadership in digital payments, PhonePe Group has expanded into financial services (Insurance, Lending, Wealth) as well as new consumer tech businesses (Pincode - hyperlocal e-commerce and Indus Appstore - India's first localized Appstore). PhonePe Group is an India headquartered technology company with a portfolio of businesses aligned with the company's vision to offer every Indian an equal opportunity to accelerate their progress by unlocking the flow of money and access to services.

Source: PhonePe Pvt. Ltd.