India to become hub for global app innovation, says Google Play executive

Indian apps and games on the Android platform clocked 200% increase in active monthly users between 2019 and 2021

India will have a "critical role" in developing global apps as its start-ups build products that are used widely, said Google Play on Thursday.

Google Play, the app store platform for Android phones, completed ten years of operations on Thursday. Aditya Swamy, director, Play Partnerships, said India is one of the top downloaders of apps and games. “From leading in-app adoptions to emerging as a large global developer hub, India will play a critical role in the evolution of the global app ecosystem in the coming decade,” he said in a blog post.

Indian apps and games saw a 200 per cent increase in active monthly users and an 80 per cent increase in consumer spending on Google Play between 2019 and 2021. “Local developers are also finding global audiences with Indian apps and games seeing a 150% increase in time spent by users outside India in 2021 compared to 2019 on Google Play.”

Swamy said Google Play will continue to invest in a range of initiatives for local developers. “We will continue to bring the best of our global experience and innovation to India while staying focused on solving local opportunities and challenges. We want to help every developer with an idea capitalize on the potential to reach 2.5 billion monthly active users and 190 countries with Google Play.”

Google recently announced its Startup School India programme to create 10,000 start-ups in smaller cities. Another initiative was launched under Google for Startups Accelerator program to specifically help women founders in the country. “We will continue to evolve our tools to support developers’ business decision making and evolve our business models to help them grow their businesses,” Swamy said.

India’s government has recently said that the country is poised to become a trillion-dollar digital economy that will support 60 to 65 million digitally enabled jobs by 2025-26. “We are confident that local developers, innovations--along with our continued commitment to helping build the local app ecosystem--will help India turn a new page in its journey to becoming a powerful digital economy,” Swamy said.

He added that user safety will remain a top priority and Google Play would help developers to deliver the best experience to the users in terms of privacy and security solutions.