Covid-19 Winners & Losers: Mobile Applications In India
As everyone in India is forced to sit at home, mobile usage is increasing everyday. However, despite higher average mobile usage time, both downloads and revenues are dropping for some of the best known mobile applications.
WhatsApp has seen a nearly 30% drop in 31-day downloads between the first 31 days of 2020 (17 million) and the 31 days leading up to April 12 (12 million). Hotstar saw a drop from 9.8 million new downloads to 3 million new downloads in the same period.
Daily downloads are another good indicator. In the week before April 12, TikTok saw around 450,000 downloads and WhatsApp saw 250,000 downloads a day. In February, the corresponding numbers were 700,000 for TikTok and 650,000 for WhatsApp.
Similarly, even food delivery apps like Big Basket, Swiggy and Zomato have seen drops (the latter two have even been shut down in Telangana until the lockdown subsides).
Meanwhile, however, some apps are booming. Gaming app Lido King has seen daily downloads jump 300% between early February and early April. Aarogya Setu — a government to help citizens identify if they live in the vicinity of anyone who has contracted Covid-19 — is top of the PlayStore charts with 780,000 daily downloads in the second week of April.
Apart from the obvious focus on coronavirus, what separates the winners from the losers?
Growth Rate Vs. Total Growth
The first thing to notice before delve into why some applications are growing and some are stagnating, is the base level from which we are judging them.
I can tell you TikTok’s daily downloads has reduced over 35% since February, while Ludo King’s has increased by 300% in the same time. That sounds like TikTok is trending downwards while Ludo King is the next big craze.
But, what if I told you that both TikTok and Ludo King had an average of 450,000 daily downloads in the week before April 12?
Aarogyu Setu’s daily downloads of 780,000 in April is just slightly more than WhatsApp’s 650,000 and TikTok’s 700,000 in February. However, both of the latter apps have much higher overall downloads already — it is estimated 8 in every 10 digitally connected Indians have WhatsApp, and 4 in every 10 have TikTok.
Moreover, they don’t have the advantage of being the only government-backed, need-based application during the time of an unprecedented need-specific crisis touching every single citizen in India.
We’ve established that people are spending more time on the Internet and the traditionally big players (while still big) are seeing declining growth.
Who’s making up the difference, and how?
Regional India Is Trying Out All The Free Samples
In my article about the simplest strategy to market to regional India, I used a simile to describe user behaviour towards mobile applications in Tier-II, Tier-III and Tier-IV India.
Much like someone facing free samples in American hypermarkets for the first time, Indians who have only come online since the advent of Jio suddenly have a wide variety of free options.
They can play games online for free and without friends. They have access to more videos and TV shows than they could ever watch in one lifetime. Opportunities to improve their education, their business and so much more is suddenly at their fingertips.
And now, they’ve been told to sit at home and they have nothing to do but experiment with their smartphones. They already had TikTok and WhatsApp, and they are definitely still using them.
But now, they have the time to explore so much more. It’s why apps like Ludo King and other gaming apps are doing much better. It’s why launching a paid Telugu OTT platform in the middle of the lockdown works, when companies like Amazon Prime and Netflix are seeing declining revenues.
Thus, the question is not how do you grow as a smaller player when people are forced to spend more time on their phone. The question is how do you stay alive as a smaller player once the lockdown ends?
Standing Out From The Pack
Winning this lockdown in India has nothing to do with your numbers today. It’s about your numbers when the lockdown ends. There is going to be a behavioural overcorrection as people spend less time on their phone as they are let out of the house.
There is only one way to make sure your mobile application survives — branding. In a previous article, I had mentioned why businesses doing well in India today should be scared. The market will overcorrect and leave you back where you were in January — except you will have two months of peaked numbers that you will forever be chasing.
The only way to build out of this situation is to make sure your application stands out from the pack. People may download your app on a whim during this lockdown, but they can learn to appreciate it if your application is constantly validated by third party sources.
At Lokal, our work to help our users with cheap medical consultations, jobs in their area, and a way to get involved with food drives in their communities (all for free) is our way to make sure the growth we are seeing is sustainable. People are talking about us as not just an app to spend some time on, but an app they have an offline connection with.
What are you doing to stand out come the end of the lockdown?
Are you unsure of how to use the lockdown to build a brand connection with new users in regional India? Please reach out to me at tarutr@getlokalapp.com, or at malhotratarutr@gmail.com.
If you are uncomfortable talking to me over email, you can DM me on my LinkedIn page or my Twitter profile. I would love to talk to each and every one of you personally!
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