Can Gautam Adani Win India With An App?

 Can Gautam Adani Win India With An App?

Gautam Adani wants to use passengers at his airports to build a super-app. But this isn't the best time for tech ventures, and competition may be in better shape than ever.

Gautam Adani is set to unveil his much-hyped super-app, built by an in-house startup, which he wants to make the "Ferrari of the digital world". The portal will launch in the next three to six months, Asia's richest tycoon told the Financial Times in a recent interview. But it seems that Adani missed the opportunity when there was a spurt in demand for online services during the pandemic. Now, the tech industry is in turmoil globally. Meanwhile, competition in Indian e-commerce is intense. Adani's Ferrari stuck in bumper to bumper traffic?

The FT said the mobile app will connect passengers to other services offered by his group across Adani's network of airports. This may be the easiest way to increase downloads. Adani operates seven Indian airports, and is currently building a new terminal and runway for its second facility in Mumbai. In total, 20% of the country's aviation traffic passes through it. If Adani were to throw in the free ride home – according to media reports, it is also investing in taxi fleets in cities where it has airports – it would potentially require millions of phones to have its as-yet-unnamed app installed. get to do.

That's just the first fight. The second would be more intriguing – to keep consumers coming back for other things.

The Chinese model is the integration of shopping, payment, entertainment, social media and finance into one place. The likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Meituan accomplished this before Beijing was alarmed by the dominance of its tech titans and made them targets of strong antitrust action. Last year's tech crackdown may have eased, but China's Covid-19 policies continue to take a toll on consumption: Alibaba recently reported a surprising quarterly loss. In Southeast Asia, where the template was successfully copied, investors are now seeking profitability before expansion. GoTo Group, the Indonesian behemoth formed through the merger of ride-hailing provider Gojek and e-commerce firm Tokopedia, is cutting 12% of its workforce.

If the regional outlook is challenging, the evidence from India is not very encouraging either. Walmart Inc. of Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc. E-commerce is undoubtedly a success with India's websites controlling a large share of the growing market - over 60% on the Flipkart site during its eight years -Day Big Billion Days Festival Tier 2 and 3 in the last quarter came from the cities.

But as the economy reopens, some of the more niche categories that gained popularity during the pandemic — such as education and beauty and fashion — are either downsizing or not growing as strongly as before. Amazon is shutting down its test preparation business and food delivery in the country. India's largest digital payments provider Paytm has seen shares plunge 75% in the year since its initial public offering, the worst first-year performance for a large IPO in a decade, according to Bloomberg News.

Online grocery shopping is booming, but Adani's rivals - Tata Group's Big Basket and Mukesh Ambani's JioMart - have what is seen as a key hook to boost customer interaction. Pharmacies are growing fast and here too Ambani's Netmeds and Flipkart's Health Plus are doing well. Adani's consumer-facing web presence is limited. The Ahmedabad-based group had picked up a significant minority stake in Flipkart-owned travel booking site Cleartrip a year ago. All the more reason to make transportation the basis of your super-app ambitions.

How fast can Adani expect to grow? With the exception of airports, electricity and city-gas distribution, and edible oils, the rest of his empire has a strong focus on mining, logistics and infrastructure, which don't necessarily offer many avenues to connect with end-consumers. Even for the 154-year-old Tata Group, which is involved in everything from salt and tea to cars and airlines, locking in customers in the digital world is proving to be a difficult task. BigBasket's super-app Tata New has been downloaded nearly 15 million times, according to Apptopia data cited in a Macquarie Capital research note last week. This is a paltry number in a country that will have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026.