Below is an excerpt from a recent interaction between IT-Voice and Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh, CEO of Multi-Verse Technologies about India’s first Indian origin Super App – MYn:
Prateek: What is a Super App and why India needs one?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: A super app is a platform developed by a company offering various services under one umbrella. For example, there are popular apps in Asia that started out as messaging apps, expanded into payments, cabs, shopping, and food ordering to become a super app. In India, the super app market is gathering pace, and the concept is not still well known. A country or region becomes super app ready when a large portion of its population is smartphone savvy, instead of desktops, and for super apps to work, the ecosystem of apps should be customised to local needs.
Prateek: What MYn App can do that other Apps can’t?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: We are India’s 1st Super App (a unified app) that offers complete privacy, has no ads, does not levy any commission, and has a revenue model that’s not dependent on user information. We charge a fixed listing fee for content creators (for their channel on MYworld), traders and enterprises (for their Work persona on MYwork). This is how we’re fundamentally different from others. We’ve also innovated at the feature level. We have a dedicated space for channels (for content creators), MY Local (for traders), users and for personas- Public (MYworld), Personal (MYown) and Work (MYwork) on the app. One can explore interest-based social media and shop local on MYworld. Stay in touch with your friends and family, store and share memories on MYown. Communicate and collaborate across teams, store and share files on MYwork. One can also avail MYn’s potentially infinite cloud storage options on MYown and MYwork. Users can earn free storage through our referral scheme.
Prateek: Growth and Expansion plans of MYn?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: We will have millions of users and businesses on the app by building continuous user journeys making it more and more ubiquitous for the users to use the app for everyday needs. We aim to be the only app that a user will ever need and possibly have our own operating system on a phone that boots to MYn.
Prateek: How is MYn different from other competitors?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: MYn’s a private, ad-free, commission-free app that allows one to discover, interact and transact on their own terms. We have a robust revenue model that’s not dependent on user information. We’ve also innovated at the feature level. We have a dedicated space for channels (for content creators), users, traders (Live Local) and for personas (MYworld), (MYown) and (MYwork) on the app. Interest-based feed, Star-rating system, we are an all-in-one app. It is India’s First Super App. The only app to complete the user journey.
Prateek: Elaborate on the evolving needs of consumers from social media applications – privacy, no ads, differentiation between work and personal profiles, all on one app etc.?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: Around 3000+ apps are uploaded to only the Google Play Store every day. Most of which are free to use which means more often than not they work on user data monetisation to sustain as a business. There is also a really high frequency of ads today on apps. We believe that there is a shift in consumer needs that is happening as we speak. We believe that since GDPR and growing awareness of data privacy, people have started to feel conscious of that fact as to how much is known about their private data and how it’s being accessed, we see that people are willing to try alternatives that offer privacy, we have seen that with the rapid adoption of apps that promote privacy. Unification works and helps, with growing number of apps, cross-platform management and using 100s of apps has become taxing for users and people love using apps that are unified with multiple use-cases wrapped into one. Apps like WeChat in China and Gojek in Indonesia are some examples of success with users along this line. Ads are everywhere and more, it’s no secret that the sheer number of ad spaces and frequency of ads are too high and most people dislike it with a passion, people pay for ad-free content in freemium-based apps, hence they feel the need to have an ad-free experience.
Prateek: Advantages of having a super app?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: While there are apps that cater to different needs, unifying them makes continuous customer journeys possible and this has immense potential. Today, there are different apps to cater to unique needs, however, from a user perspective, their digital lives are siloed and they need to spend a lot of time trying to bring it all together. With MYn, we unify and make the digital lives of people simpler and better.
Prateek: Any upcoming features?
Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh: Our upcoming features include – Payments for channel subscriptions and pay-to-view content, Dark mode, autoplay, and Tracking cabs/autos on a map.
