A paradigm shift: Why it is all the more important to go digital?
India is a country that is experiencing rapid digitisation. Today, the smartphone adoption is fuelling adigital revolution within the country as digital servicesare being actively availed and preferred over their traditional alternatives. This trend is bringing about a paradigm shift in the customer behaviour and aggressively changing business dynamics. And after all, who wouldn’t want to book tour packages with a few clicks and touches rather than facing the scorching sun to hunt a relevant tour agency. Users are now predominantly preferring mobile-based services which offer them great comfort and convenience.
This phenomenon also explains why a whopping 90 billion applications were downloaded collectively on Android and iOS across the globe, all during the last year. And, a sizeable portion of these downloads were coming from our country. India, a late entrant in the smartphone landscape, grabbed the largest pie of the overall figure—with more than 6 billion downloads on Android, a striking 71% YoY growth. This has made India the fastest growing app market around the world; let’s not forget, however, that this is when a near—70% of our population is still waiting for smartphone access. One can only imagine the wonders that’ll happen when the on going digitisation wave reaches this cluster.
Even so, the internet, which was once a dominion of young, urban, tech-savvy users, is being adopted with equal enthusiasm by people belonging to diverse age groups, socioeconomic classes, and geographical regions. Today, a smartphone is used by a grandfather in a remote area to havevideo conversations with his granddaughter living abroad, a small retailerto accept orders as well aspaymentsin a hassle-free manner, and even by a mid-aged working professionalon field assignmentsto mark his attendance via a mobile application. This increased integrationof smartphones in day-to-day lifestyles is further increasing the dependence of people, in other words, customers, on such applications.And this is because the comfort offered by a quick-to-download smartphone app is simply unparalleled.
Consider this, you are sitting in a somniferous conference in the middle of the day when you suddenly realise that it’s your dear friend’s birthday. You’d like to order her a cake right away from her favourite bakery but you can’t make calls. You can, however, make a few unobtrusive clicks on your smartphone and order her something lip-smacking. Alas, her favourite bakery doesn’t have an app. You will do a quick Google search and find the next best alternative that offers the option of hassle-free, app-based orders and payments and voila, your job is done. No points for guessing who’s losing out despite being really good at what they do… the first bakery!
Increased integrationof smartphones in day-to-day lifestyles is further increasing the dependence of people, in other words, customers, on such applications.
This example is just a glimpse into the benefits an integrated app can have for a business that understands its potential and the deep negative implications for those businesses that don’t! Because here’s the truth… the increasing smartphone adoption is also gradually increasing the diversity within the audience. Earlier, mobile applications were only viable for limited use cases as the audience base was very narrow. Today, as we make payments to auto-rickshawalas through our mobile wallet, we can understand the enhanced reach of these digital devices. Specific content or a business model can be targeted towards this bulging bottom of the customer pyramid – which was previously unapproachable.
However, developing a mobile application is a timeand capital-intensive process. And still, as the activity is quite technical, a business can do little other than compromising with the solution extended by the developer—including odd graphics and user interface. This is where integrated customised applications offersignificantadvantage to dynamic business owners. They enable them to design their own applications for multiple use cases, such as content, shopping, or even enterprise functions, in 20 Indian and 5 international languages through an easy DIY (do it yourself) app development platform. The user can create a mobile application with simple clicks, drags, and drops with easy-to-use solutionsextended by these platforms.
Author is the founder & MD of Instappy.com