How Indian startups are supporting app developers
Vodafone has recently launched its developer platform to empower the developer community. This will allow developers to use Vodafone platform to offer content and customized services to users. It will serve as a new monetization channel for app developers. To enable developers with more supporting services, Vodafone Developer's Bangalore team had organized a developer enabler’s session recently.In the past, Gaana.com, Cleartrip, Vserv, Reverie Language Technology, App Virality, PCloudy and Betaglide have launched their APIs and support developers in the app development cycle. Here’s a brief account of these APIs and how they are encouraging the developer community by simplifying the process of app development and monetization:
Travel APIs
Cleartrip has one of the best travel mobile apps in the world that has also been featured as part of the editor’s collection on Apple store. Recently, Cleartrip launched its own white-labeled external API to enable third party developers to use its inventory and develop apps on top of it. Developers can use these APIs to collate data and create various apps based on it. Apart from train tickets, bus inventory API is the most wanted by developers. To support developers with a robust bus API, Mybustickets.in has launched its own API platform. Mybustickets.in is an online bus-ticketing portal with more than 20,000 bus services in 20 states on board.
Music APIs
The recent acquisitions of indie music platforms in India highlight the fact that the music industry is moving towards consolidation. Gaana.com is launching its own API to empower developers to build music apps and not get involved in the licensing menace. Gaana.com is currently the leading music-streaming platform in India with close to three million songs across 45 genres in 21 languages. Their API program is live on their website and developers can submit their app ideas for curation. With Rdio’s entry into India via Dhingana acquisition, developers can expect a lot more music API platforms to work with this year in India.
Monetization Channels
Monetizing is one of the biggest hurdles for Indian app developers due to less penetration of credit cards among the users. Vodafone’s API platform enables developers to connect seamlessly to offer operator billing that will allow millions of users to pay for the app or any content using their mobile phones. Free apps with ads as revenue source is the most preferred monetization model for the Indian app developers. Vserv’s AppWrapper is one such product that caters to this monetization need from developers. It is a simple app monetization platform for mobile developers. It enables premium advertising and great pricing models on any app, without coding, in just one click, helping developers monetize using both premium ads as well as micro transaction models. Vserv’s platform boosts of close to $3-5 eCPM and 8-10% CTR on an average for developers, which seem considerably high against its competitors.
Testing
Testing android applications across devices is a major challenge developers face owing to the current fragmented landscape. Limited access to real devices or testing apps in emulators isn’t enough these days for developers; limited access to devices considerably hampers app development process. To help developers make better apps, PCloudy provides instant access to wide variety of real physical devices using a Web interface from any modern browser.
Growth Hacking
App Virality is giving app developers an opportunity to use ‘Growth Hacking’ tricks to increase their app’s social ROI. It also gives developers a proper mechanism for increasing their user retention with its Toolkit. It helps app developers with features that include in-app polls and surveys, analytics to measure app downloads, social mentions and traffic, A/B testing and ability to identify top influencers among various channels etc. It’s currently in its development stage and developers can request for an invite on its website.
Language support
With the widespread of mobile in India, there has always been a dearth of good quality regional content. Reverie Language Technologies tries to solve this problem and supports developers to be able to provide their content in regional languages. They provide regional language capabilities to devices manufacturers – mobile manufacturers, tablets, set top boxes, games and application developers among others.
