For the last hour, on the dinner table with family, Aman has been shuffling between multiple apps, trying to create an FD, checking his bank balance, paying insurance premiums, and tracking how his stock investments are performing. As he went app-hopping, he lost his appetite when he discovered he had forgotten the password to some of them. The shopkeeper, who is in his early 40s, had always believed that going digital would ease all his concerns when it came to his finances. He, however, is now coming to terms with the fact that his firm belief in smartphones and apps was only partially true.

Sifting through multiple apps, remembering all the muddled passwords, and keeping track of storage space on the phone can be tedious and tiresome. While mobile apps simplify daily tasks to an extent, they, in their current avatar, surely aren’t the optimal way of getting the simplest things done.

Now imagine a scenario, a utopia of sorts, where we can get all these services and facilities under one umbrella app. How much simpler would our day (and dinner) become? Well, a unified app, also known as a super app, has been doing just that for the last couple of years. It is only now that this concept has been gaining prominence.

While some companies in India are building multi-purpose apps, others have already launched the early versions of their super apps. Take, for instance, Tata Neu, which has forayed into the market with an all-inclusive experience by offering everything from fashion, gadgets, groceries, travel, hotel bookings, and finance on a single platform. It has brought all the services and products offered by the sprawling salt-to-supercar conglomerate on one platform.

Super Apps: Cutting through the clutter

Today, mobile screens have become the prime real estate, with thousands of apps jostling for a pride of place on the home screen. As the storage capacity of smartphones doubles every launch season, most people now have dozens, if not hundreds of apps, on their phones. Some have been downloaded for one-time use and then forgotten. Others end up getting lost down memory lane, only to be uninstalled in due course.

To tackle this real and present danger of our short attention span when it comes to apps, industry players are now focused on building multi-service platforms where users can carry out different tasks and activities easily. For example, Swiggy, which started out as a food delivery platform, has started expanding the offerings on its apps by including grocery shopping, pick and drop service, as well as restaurant booking service.

Almost all industries have started their journey to provide consumers with all-inclusive digital experiences. It’s no surprise that India’s rapidly growing fintech ecosystem is propelling the rise of super apps – after all, money moves first.

Fintech driving the super app revolution

With over 692 million (roughly 50% of the population) active internet users in the country, Indian fintech have been working relentlessly to provide users with a hassle-free, all-inclusive experience. A decade ago, mobile apps started making financial services easily accessible for

everyone with internet access and a smartphone. Now, fintechs are taking giant strides in making that accessibility simpler.

Even when it comes to super apps, fintechs are the key drivers in bringing everything – digital payments, trading, retirement purses, tax filing, insurance, investments, etc. – on one platform. As a result of their role, participation in financial markets has increased across Tier-2, 3, and beyond cities.

Having said that, as with every innovation, building a super app is a long trial-and-error mechanism. As it involves third-party integrations and multiple services on a single platform, it needs a high configuration structure. An absence of a robust infrastructure will only lead to poor user experience, which is a nightmare for customer acquisition and retention teams.

Technological robustness will pave the way

The secret to building successful super apps is to ensure a seamless integration that provides users with an all-in-one platform for several services. It is crucial to understand that a super app is not a marketplace that takes users to different web pages or platforms for different services – it brings it all to you on one single platform. After all, a clutter-free experience is something that will help you corner the prime position on the user’s home screen. So, it’s time to focus on building an all-inclusive super app that does not get lost in the crowd.

About the author:

Vishesh Sharma, CMO, Ashika Group