With Paytm<\/a> tanking up on Rs 16,600 crore via initial public offering, the race for India's super app<\/a> on the lines of Chinese giants WeChat and Alipay is set to get hotter.
A host of conglomerates including Tatas and Reliance<\/a> have stepped up efforts to launch their own super apps and gain an early advantage.
India doesn’t have a super app that’s is in the league of WeChat yet. The closest is Paytm, which offers users the ability to make digital transactions, shop, buy flight and entertainment tickets, insurance and several other similar services. Amazon, Flipkart, Bajaj, SBI and WhatsApp<\/a> are among the others in a competition to build a super app.
With Paytm<\/a> tanking up on Rs 16,600 crore via initial public offering, the race for India's super app<\/a> on the lines of Chinese giants WeChat and Alipay is set to get hotter.
A host of conglomerates including Tatas and Reliance<\/a> have stepped up efforts to launch their own super apps and gain an early advantage.
India doesn’t have a super app that’s is in the league of WeChat yet. The closest is Paytm, which offers users the ability to make digital transactions, shop, buy flight and entertainment tickets, insurance and several other similar services. Amazon, Flipkart, Bajaj, SBI and WhatsApp<\/a> are among the others in a competition to build a super app.
Tata Group<\/a> <\/strong>
Tata Group is planning to come up with its own super app and bring its various consumer businesses under one digital umbrella and offer a seamless omnichannel experience. It is also making acquisitions such as Bigbasket and 1mg to bolster its digital presence.
“It will be a super app, a lot of apps in apps and so on … We have a very big opportunity … How do we give a simple online experience connecting all of this, and at the same time a beautiful omnichannel experience? That is the vision,” N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons<\/a> had said.
The company is looking to leverage its huge consumer base which is spread across various categories and build a “world-class platform out of India to serve the Indian consumer\".
Tata Group has a host of consumer-facing brands that include grocery items, fashion brands, and electronics brands.
In terms of financial services, Tata Group has an insurance company as well as a consumer finance arm, which can be easily integrated into its super app.
Paytm<\/strong>
Paytm, which lacks services such as ride hailing, food delivery, and online groceries, is the leader in the race at present. The app had 85.49 million monthly active users in March 2020. The company has launched a mini-apps store and partnered with companies like Ola, Domino’s, and Decathlon. It plans to have a million such apps on its store by 2021. Mini apps are custom-built web apps that give users an app-like experience without needing to download one. The listing and distribution of these mini apps within the Paytm app is free of charge, and users can use the Paytm wallet, Paytm Payments Bank, UPI<\/a>, or net banking for payments at no charges, and credit cards at a 2% fee. These apps are low-cost and quick to build, using HTML and JavaScript.
The company claims it has 325 million registered wallets, which is higher than the 200 million active UPI handles that have been created in the country.
Now the company has set its sights on using the platform to sell multiple financial services such as digital gold, mutual funds, insurance, and consumer and business loans.
What's a super app?<\/strong>
A super app is a product that combines a bunch of services and allows third-party developers to integrate mini programs inside the main product.
Among the types of super apps, the first one is where users can conduct transactions such as payments and access value-added services like ordering food. The second type has a messaging platform, access to social media, and is able to customise different transactions on one platform. It allows users to perform several tasks like ordering food, booking a ride, making payments, and even offers loans. The third variant is an extension of the first one, with additional infrastructure and services, such as financial products, payments, and cloud infrastructure to its merchants.
SBI Yono<\/strong>
State Bank of India (SBI) is looking to build its super app Yono into a wider platform that can be used by rival lenders. The bank's plans to create a platform for Yono that will be integrated with regional rural banks or cooperative banks. The plan is to turn the app into a platform where all banks, including SBI, can offer their products and services. The bank feels that the product will be more valuable to investors once the app is fully built out as a platform.
Yono user base has nearly doubled to 32 million at the end of December 2020 from 17 million a year ago.
SBI disbursed personal loans worth Rs 15,996 crore through more than 1 million Yono loan accounts between April and December 2020. It is now looking to extend it to home loan customers and make the entire process online. It is also planning to go big with its multi-lingual Yono Krishi platform that offers services such as Yono Khata, Yono Bachat, Yono Mitra and Yono Mandi to its farm customers. It wants to expand Yono Business through which it has made it easier for corporate customers to apply for letters of credit and bank guarantees.
Reliance Retail<\/a><\/strong>
Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd’s acquisition of a controlling stake in business-to-business (B2B) search engine Just Dial (JD) will provide it with access to a large merchant base for its new commerce platform JioMart. It will also allow it to harness JD’s evolution into a super app that will help book flights, train and bus tickets, cabs and hotel rooms and pay bills, as well as provide other services. Reliance Retail plans to onboard 10 million merchant partners for its new commerce initiative over the next three years. The acquisition will allow RRVL to leverage JD’s database of 30.4 million business listings and its consumer traffic of 129 million quarterly unique users as on March 31, 2021. JD’s B2B platform, JD Mart, matches wholesalers and manufacturers with retailers and industrial buyers, according to Credit Suisse.
Also, Facebook and telecom giant Reliance Jio are coming together to figure out the possibility of a super app, similar to the multipurpose Chinese platform WeChat. They are reportedly hoping to develop the app using the WhatsApp platform as well as its huge user base.
The platform would be a place for users to chat, while also letting them shop for groceries from Reliance Retail stores, for clothes and apparel and make digital payments using JioMoney.
WhatsApp<\/strong>
WhatsApp has a vast user base in India, but it has too few services to offer and must build and maintain its fintech muscle. The variety of its product portfolio and the speed of implementation will determine whether it can topple the incumbents in India. It may also have to face regulatory hurdles in India.
Bajaj Finance<\/strong>
Bajaj Finance has recently stepped up its wallet business. Its cross-sell franchise has about 27 million customers with around 70% of all no-cost EMI loans given for offline consumer durable purchases being through it.
Bajaj has recently launched a payments app and looks to be on the way to build a super app. The launch of the digital wallet is part of a broader strategy by the consumer NBFC to expand its digital finance offerings. The company has been rolling out ‘Bajaj Pay’ in phases to expand into the payments segment.
The potential<\/strong>
WeChat’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is estimated to be at least seven times the ARPU of WhatsApp, the largest messaging platform in the world.
The WeChat “wallet” is not a traditional mobile wallet per se. It’s a marketplace with carefully curated, pre-approved service providers that users can transact with — taxis, doctors, government services, and even celebrities. When spending money is as simple as a few taps, usage stats skyrocket.
In 2017, China’s mobile payments reached over $5.5 trillion, roughly 50 times the size of the US market.
The other main player is Ant Group's Alipay, which also has more than one billion users and offers 120,000 mini programmes.
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