Have you ever thought that instead of installing separate apps for each task in your mobile phone, there is a single portal that fulfills all your needs?
Whether you want to call a friend, send money to a loved one online, order a pizza, pay an electricity bill, book a ride, pay a child’s school fees or buy a movie ticket. You will need five to seven types of apps.
But what if all these facilities are available in a single app? This is called super app which is getting quite popular nowadays.
About 4,000 apps are registered on the Google Play Store every day, the total number of which has reached 3,480,000 by July 2022. About 2.2 million apps are registered on the Apple Store as well.
But only a few are super apps. A super app is a collection of multiple services that may not be similar to each other but are working together in a single app.
In the context of Pakistan, if Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Maps, Daraz and Easy Paisa are combined in one app, it will become a super app.
Some of the super apps:
China’s WeChat and Alipay, Singapore’s Grab, Indonesia’s GoTo, Vietnam’s Zalo and South Korea’s Kakao are super apps.
Most of them started as ride services or messaging apps and later expanded into financial services, food delivery, digital payments, gaming, travel booking, utility bill payments, airline ticketing, mobile phone top-ups, music streaming and social networking.
In today’s digital world, it is only natural for millions of users to connect with these apps. Especially in Asia, which has half of the world’s population, the reason for the success of these apps is the vast network of users.
Singapore’s Grab provides delivery, financial services and ride booking services to around 190 million customers in 428 cities across eight countries, including Thailand and Vietnam.
GoTo (GoTo) has become Indonesia’s largest tech company and a share of two percent of the GDP of one trillion dollars.
Super apps impact on economy:
87% of the South Korean population is using Kakao. However, most super apps have been successful in Asia. Europe and the US, despite being ahead of the curve in technology, will see fewer super apps. There are several reasons for this.
The first reason is how quickly people in a region accept new technology. Smart technology is quickly gaining acceptance in countries where the majority of the population consists of young people. Asia’s majority population is also young and this is the first reason why most super apps are successful in Asia.
According to a report, in terms of the number of smartphone users, China and India are leading the world, while Japan and Indonesia are also among the first ten countries.
Another reason is easy access to internet and technology. Over the past two decades, Chinese companies have made high-quality, low-cost smartphones affordable for the common man. In addition, 73 percent of Chinese have access to the Internet.
These are the two driving forces behind Alipay and WeChat becoming super apps. You can also pay via Alipay or WeChat in a Chinese village. Any app usually starts with a half-service. For example, messaging, ride sharing or delivery service. After initial success, more services are added.
A successful super app in one country is not necessarily successful in another country. Success depends on how well app developers take into account local needs and issues.
For example, Indonesia’s Gojek started as a bike ride and call center. At that time most people did not have mobile phones so the company provided easy loans to its bikers to buy mobile phones.
If you start a startup related to travel facilities, it is important that you have a thorough knowledge of the traffic situation and transport culture of your target area. In Lahore or Karachi, you cannot bring a model from China, Singapore or South Korea.
Super apps are gaining popularity not only in Asia but also in Latin American and African countries. Although there is a kind of digital gap due to economic backwardness, it is also being filled rapidly as the use of internet and smart phones is also increasing among the young generation of these countries. Chinese companies are also introducing cheap smartphones in these markets.
Why there are no super apps in europe:
There are many reasons why there are no super apps in Europe and America. Since China has created its own platforms to replace Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Google, the competition has not been there. Chinese companies have a large population of their own country as consumers and no competition.
But the competition between companies in America and Europe is fierce. For example, Apple’s iMessage competes with Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger. This competition does not allow any one company to monopolize the market in such a way that it creates a super app.
Euorope’s privacy laws are very strict:
Another reason is that data privacy laws in China are not as strict as in Europe and America. Big Chinese companies have millions of users’ data that they use for their various services, but that doesn’t mean that Chinese users don’t care about their privacy.
In contrast, Europe is very sensitive about data privacy and its laws are quite strict.
Most of the super apps depend on the data of users. They may also use user data stored for one service for another service. Which is easy in a country like China, but very difficult in Europe and America.
Super apps in Pakistan:
Officially, there is no super app in Pakistan because for a while telecom companies did not go beyond call and message service and with the presence of apps like WhatsApp and Messenger, the role of telecom companies was reduced to that of an internet provider. .
Jazz once tried to launch a super app called Veon, modeled after China’s WeChat, but it failed. Because Pakistan is not China where Google’s alternative to Baidu, Amazon’s alternative to Alibaba and Facebook and WhatsApp’s alternative to WeChat exist.
Despite this, telecom companies are offering facilities like digital payments, banking, shopping and mobile top-up through their apps. Jazz Cash, Easy Paisa and U Bank are examples of this.
Easypaisa and Jazz cash, may be a super app:
Now the specific network issue is also eliminated. Irrespective of your network, you can open an Easy Paisa account. EasyPaisa and JazzCash are providing almost all facilities except message and call. Maybe one of them will become a super app in the near future.
