EP32: 100M users, 400k apps and the Vernacular OS journey {Akash of IndusOS}

Stars & Startups

EP32: {Akash Dongre, Co-founder of IndusOS}

I chat with Akash Dongre, the CPO and cofounder at IndusOS - the creators of the largest App Store outside of the play store with over 100 million users and thousands of apps created for the vernacular audience. They currently power the App Store on many of the Samsung phones and have been through quite the journey from starting up to meandering their way to a vernacular mobile device manufacturer, to a Vernacular Operating System for other OEM and now becoming the go to App Store for Samsung.

We chat with Akash also on his time porting mobile games, working with mobile payments in the early days, building a hardware business and then finding scale with the vernacular app store!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

→ Don’t forget to subscribe to the Newsletter via stars.substack.com so that you can receive future podcast releases delivered to your inbox!

→ Full episode of the podcast is available on my YouTube Channel

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

There's so much to share from their 14 year journey. Indus OS was available in English and 23 Indian regional languages which had an active user base of over 10 million. It has evolved to the App Bazaar that now has over 400,000 apps developed by 50k developers for the local audience, the real Bharat. Samsung invested $5 million in 2019 and now every Samsung phone in India ships with the Indus App Bazaar.

About IndusOS:

The @IndusAppBazaar was ranked #1 and fastest growing App Marketing Platform in the Indian Subcontinent on the @AppsFlyer Performance Index, 2019. If you're a native language developer they can provide you with sufficient visibility to distribute and monetize your app. In 2017, Indus OS raised $4 million in its Series A round from Omidyar Network, Ventureast, and JSW Ventures. Prior to that, its angel round saw participation from Naveen Tewari of InMobi, Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, Pranay Chulet of Quikr, and Mayank Singhal of Temasek Holdings. More recently Affle made an investment into IndusOS.

Note: IndusOS is hiring!

Stay Safe!

- V

Timeline:

01:30 - Introduction

04:15 - IIT & getting started in mobile gaming

08:49 - Mobile payments - MoFirst

13:40 - Not choosing to pursuing gaming

20:30 - The seed for Vernacular OS

24:00 - Selling Hardware to regional customers - Firstouch

29:31 - Many hardware players in India

32:41 - Launch in Multiple languages

38:05 - 50,000 app developers to localize their applications

47:39 - Challenges with monetising the OS - How to compete with FREE?

51:09 - Transition from OEM to App Store & 100M users

52:16 - Consumption trends

55:30 - Apps that do well on the Indus Store