Here’s a fact: The Google Play Store has had more than 2.5 billion users across 190 countries and over two million developers are working on the platform. That’s not all, India has been one of the top downloaders of apps and games in the last decade while there has been a 200 per cent increase in active monthly users in 2021 versus 2019. As Google Play completes 10 years, Aditya Swamy, director, Play Partnerships, Google Play, speaks to The Telegraph about the journey thus far.
Aditya Swamy, director, Play Partnerships, Google Play
A decade for Google Play. How has the app platform evolved in these 10 years?
India is definitely one of the more fascinating growth stories we have seen emerge on the back of mobile apps. Needless to say, we are an app-first country today, with apps empowering communities, creating jobs, enabling global businesses, and contributing to economic growth. We have seen a diverse range of helpful app categories emerge in India. While sectors such as games and entertainment have always received great interest, utility categories (such as e-commerce, foodtech and UPI) and transformational categories (such as education, health and language services) are growing and have transformed the app landscape. We are also seeing so much diversity in app development today. Founders and app developers, not just from metros, but a lot of tier-2 and tier-3 cities are emerging as well. These are innovators closest to some of India’s most pressing needs and challenges and they’re enabling new categories in India. For instance, agritech is a category we are seeing emerging and scale from India.
There are many great examples of local impactful solutions finding success. HealthifyMe has emerged as a popular health app helping many across the country with their fitness needs. Wysa has found success in the mental health space with AI-powered technology. Doubtnut is making education more accessible as a multilingual learning app. There has been great momentum in gaming too. Ludo King became one of the first Indian games to cross 500 million downloads. PlaySimple Games is another great example of a local gaming studio thriving in global markets. We’ve had the privilege of working with many of the creative minds behind these apps as part of our programmes. Agritech start-up Krishify is scaling up economic opportunities for farmers, Evolve is helping the LGBTQ+ community with mental health offerings, Stamurai is enabling accessible and affordable speech therapy — and there are many more. The success and meaningful impact driven by all of these local founders keep us optimistic about the future of India’s app ecosystem.
What kind of long-term assistance does Google offer developers?
Indian apps and games saw a 200 per cent increase in active monthly users in 2021 compared to 2019 on Google Play. Local developers are also finding global audiences with Indian apps and games seeing a 150 per cent increase in time spent by users outside India in 2021 compared to 2019 on Google Play. This is truly exciting as it shows India’s potential to emerge as a leading hub of global app innovation.
We have always been committed to helping Indian developers of all sizes build successful, locally relevant businesses. In the past decade, we have consistently invested in the Android and Google Play ecosystem, aiming to support developers at every stage of their growth. Our data and analytics have helped developers better understand, reach, and build for local and global audiences on Google Play. Through Play Academy, we have trained over 80,000 developers in India, more developers than any other country. Hundred exciting app-preneurs graduated from our Appscale Academy programme with MeitY Startup Hub. We recently announced the Google Startup School India to enable 10,000 startups in tier-2 and tier-3 cities and the Google for Startups Accelerator, India Women Founders to specifically help women founders in the country.
How has Google Play been thinking of India differently?
Our store today is a lot more local, showcasing a diverse range of relevant apps for Indian users. You’ll see many localised moments being celebrated on the store across the year with an effort to showcase a range of developers building helpful apps. For instance, our annual Best Of Awards that celebrates many emerging local apps across categories and helped many apps increase their discoverability and audience base. Another example is the launch of “Offers” — a new tab in the Google Play Store app to help you discover deals in games and apps across travel, shopping, media and entertainment, fitness, and more. All of us as a society, we love to have access to offers and deals, so that’s another way of localising the store. We are also focused on bringing the best of our global experience and innovation to India, while staying focussed on solving for local opportunities and challenges. We recently launched Play Pass in India through which users can enjoy 1,000-plus apps and games without ads or in-app purchases. We continue to keep adding locally relevant forms of payment, such as UPI and recharge codes.
What is Google doing about user safety and to help users have a better understanding of how their data is being used?
User safety is a top priority for us. We have been working closely with the developer ecosystem to protect users from abusive or malicious apps. Google Play Protect scans over 125 billion apps per day to keep people safer from malware and unwanted software. Globally, our machine-learning detection and enhanced app review processes helped block 1.2 million policy violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2021, preventing billions of harmful installations. Earlier this year, we launched a new data safety section where developers are required to give people more information about how their apps collect, share and secure data. We will continue to work with developers to help them deliver the best quality experiences to users in the evolving privacy and security landscape.
What’s the future looking like for Google Play and how important is India for the platform?
While we have always been one of the top app downloaders, external reports indicate that India is expected to become the country with the highest number of developers in the future. So India will evolve from a leading app consumption economy to also a leading app development hub. It’s exciting to see India increasingly becoming the innovation hub of the world. 5G will further boost this consumption and the app ecosystem at large. Growing monetisation in India is also a significant opportunity. The country has a very large user base, which is opening up increasingly to online transactions. As that comes in, we are seeing the revenue momentum also grow. Indian apps and games saw an 80 per cent increase in consumer spends in 2021 compared to 2019 on Google Play. So not only is India significant from a user and a download point of view for us, India is also a growing region for monetisation.
10 key moments for Google Play
2012: Google Play launches as a merger of Android Market, Google Music and Google eBookstore
2017: Introduced Google Play Protect to keep users safe from harmful apps
2018: Launch of Google Play Academy, an e-learning platform to help developers grow their apps and games
2018: Launched Indie Games Accelerator to help gaming start-ups in Asia find success
2019: Added UPI to the existing roster of payment options on Google Play in India
2020: Launch of New Google Play Console to help developers grow their businesses with enhanced insights and guidance
2021-22: Launch of Appscale Academy with MeitY Startup Hub to help 100 local start-ups build and scale high-quality apps
2022: Launch of Play Pass and Offers in India
2022: Launch of Data Safety Section to give users more information about how apps use their data
2022: Google Play celebrates 10th birthday with a new logo
