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Mobile Startup Where lies the opportunity?

Anamika Sahu
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Anamika Sahu
According to Gartner, a market research firm, this year alone, mobile users across the globe will pay more than $6.2 billion to buy ‘Mobile Applications’, such as games, social networking tools, productivity and entertainment-based mini programs for mobile phones. This is enough to claim that the mobile space holds a lot of scope in terms of growth and innovation for entrepreneurs. But at the same time, it holds different phenomenal importance in different countries, especially the western countries where the access to internet and its usage are par different from the Indian market.

There are several areas in the mobile app segment that is still left unexplored leaving a vast scope for the entrepreneurs to grow. However, before deciding on to the app that it wants to develop, a startup should conduct a short research on the current utility and the future scope of the app. Startups need to find the source of discovery of the app, track its download and the repeat users for it. This will help them find a better opportunity to grab and start with.

“In India, where the mobile phone is going to become the gateway to internet, mobile applications should be looked upon as a convergence of m-commerce and e-commerce. In the near future, it is going to be more important to look at your business in that context rather than just looking it as a pure mobile app because the economy are different and even the way people access to internet is very different from the western countries,” says Rajesh Rai, CEO, India Innovation Fund.

VCs are also foreseeing a vast scope in this mobile related space, especially in terms of sales force that several companies are growing in order to grab the available opportunities in the market globally. Talking about their investment in Sourcebits, Ranjith Menon, VP, IDG Ventures India, says, “Sourcebits had gradually built a sales force of more than 250 people, representing the huge scope that the space into which they are holds. The key design team sits in the Eastern Europe and the U.S. and one reason to it is because the talent availability is much better in the Eastern Europe than any other place. But one of the other reason for it is that the apps developed there is basically served to consumers in those regions and ait is quite difficult for us to sit here and decide on to what will best suit the market there and its usage pattern.”

Talking about the single app and multiple app business, he says “At the end of the day, it is consumers’ app and every business has to see how the consumer reacts to certain apps. So it impossible for one to build the app and be absolutely sure that it is going to succeed. You need to build a portfolio of products that are targeting consumers and it is possible to build a company like this. Most of the mobile applications companies are small, and not of the size of millions of dollars, and the challenge to these is scaling in the market.”


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