Super-apps India Reload
The Tatas officially launched the Tata Neu super app on April 7, 2022, and it has been making headlines every week since they made the announcement, even before the launch. Not only that, but this super app market appears to be so lucrative that not only the Tatas, but also the Ambanis and Adanis are all set to enter this giant space, so practically three of India’s biggest business houses will be competing with each other to become market leaders in yet another industry.
First, let’s try to understand where and how the super app paradigm emerged, as well as how super apps became super powerful people.
The super app saga began in China in 2009, when the country started creating the Great Firewall. China effectively blocked American websites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Why did this happen? Because the Chinese government was concerned about the amount of power these organisations could wield over the Chinese people by having their data, so they began nitpicking and banning them one by one. Facebook is accused of promoting protester contact during a deadly riot in western China, whilst Google was banned owing to sponsorship on search queries, and as you can imagine, there was no Google and no Facebook one beautiful day in China.
As a result of this, few things happened in the Chinese market: number one, by the time this ban took effect, the Chinese people had already become accustomed to the digital ecosystem; the number of smartphones produced in China had already skyrocketed; and millions of Chinese had already become accustomed to these American websites; and number two, since the American websites were banned, there was a large gap in the market, requiring the Chinese market to urgently seek replacement.
This is what prompted Chinese companies to set up and create services for China, but due to space constraints, they had to combine multiple services into a single app, and this is where the concept of super apps was born, and the company that pioneered this wave was none other than Tencent, with the app they launched being none other than WeChat.
India super-app story 1.0
The Indian version of super-apps has majorly been an anti-climax. We Indians have a history of abandoning apps when they become too generalised.
For example, Facebook has a marketplace built in, but few of us use it. Instead, we have specialised apps like BookMyShow, OLX, and Amazon, which are literally three different types of marketplaces. Disrupting the existing leaders in their category in India will be extremely difficult because the barrier to acquiring users in India is reluctance. Paytm, which aspired to become a super app but ended up degrading its existing customer base instead.
India super-app story 2.0
So, why are both the Tatas and Reliance so keen on getting into this model when the stats indicate failure? Because both the Tatas and Reliance are NOT starting a super app from scratch; instead, they are bringing in all the specialists and market leaders under one roof to create an ecosystem of offerings. This is where their acquisition strategy and conglomerate factor come into play, as we saw with the Tata Neu super app.
Apart from that, they have BigBasket, in which Tata digital acquired a majority stake last year, and then we have retail shield Croma, entertainment services like Tata Play, Tata CLIQ app. And then we have Starbucks, which is a joint venture with the Tatas in India, apart from that we have cult.fit, in which Tatas are investing 75 million dollars, and then we have 1mg, which is a joint venture with the Tata.
In short… as far as super apps in India are concerned::
