It’s something that not many in the developing Internet markets have managed to do. India’s home grown ‘Indus OS’, with a market share of 6.3% (counterpoint research), has become the 2nd most popular mobile operating system (OS) there, largely driven by its popularity among the nation’s rural masses, connecting millions in their native language.
Even as China started early on in the race of developing home-grown operating systems (OS) (last 15 years or so) like China OS (COS), Kylin & Red Flag, none of them have seen a market share like that of Indus OS in the last 2 years. Indus boasts of garnering 4.5 million users in a year.
The Indian OS is looking forward to creating a mobile ecosystem for its 1 billion smartphone users from emerging markets in their native language in the long run. In the short term, the team’s goal is to reach 100 million users in the next 3 years.
In an email interview with What’s New on the Net, the company’s co-founder & CEO Rakesh Deshmukh said they intended to be on every 1 in 6 devices in India.
“We aim to digitally connect at least 100 million users in their native language by the end of 2018. We would continue to maintain our leading position by launching more innovations. We are continually exploring partnerships with major smartphone brands in the country to expand our current user base of 4.5 million & to make the Regional Operating System available to a wider audience. In an effort to do that, we have already partnered with 2 more local smartphone brands after Micromax, Celkon & Swipe,” he said.
Indus currently supports 12 major Indian languages & its multilingual system is based on Android got its big break in mid-2015 when local smartphone giant Micromax used it for some of its models instead of Google Android.
What’s also made it easier for the rural consumers to use Indus is its carrier billing service via the App Bazaar, which means users can pay for downloads via their phone bill. This is a big deal for all those rural consumers who don’t have a bank account or net banking. It is via this kind of innovative technology & simplification of transactions that Indus plans to stay ahead of the competition in the coming years.
“We have now achieved the number 2 spot in India’s OS industry as per market share within 12 months of the launch, for 2 consecutive quarters. It is evident that the audience has embraced the innovations that we bring to a smartphone, at the same time simplifying their experience of using 1,” Rakesh said.
According to him, Indus’s innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation & transliteration) & Indus Reader (text to speech) among others, stem from their patented technologies supported by robust product & language teams.
“The product is a result of over 3 years of engineering & linguistic efforts. We are continually building new products & features in response to the market needs. In addition, we will continue to strengthen our partnerships with the Govt. of India, top smartphone brands & leading global app developers. To replicate this entire technology, ecosystem & build relationships will be a challenge for any other player,” he added.
The Indus OS can also be used on a Tablet as well.
“Our product philosophy is to create technology to fit the needs of the Indian market through innovation & localization. We are currently experimenting with some of these new technologies & at the right time once we reach the required critical mass, we will release the right product, fit for the Indian consumers which will have most of the above-stated technologies incorporated,” he said.
Giving a peek into their initial research, Rakesh said that even though they did not intend to launch their own mobile devices anytime in the near future, they had launched a test device in the Saurashtra region in the state of Gujarat, which Gujarati being their 1st test language.
“We sold a few 1000 phones having our own operating system, to test out the consumer’s response. We built a database of people who bought the devices, & we spoke to them in detail regarding their experience of using a regional operating system,” he said.
“We used their responses to learn the market needs & further enhance our product offering to scale it by incorporating more innovations in multiple regional languages. We then launched the operating system in the Indian market with established smartphone brands to reach a national audience,” he added.
Rakesh signs off by stating that Indus intends to enable users to do more on their smartphones devices – that, in fact, was the startup’s mission.
Video Credit: Youtube/Indus OS
•Share This•
