Flipkart's becomes first e-commerce app in India to cross 100M downloads

E-commerce market leader Flipkart today announced that its app has become the first online shopping app in India to cross 100 million downloads on Google Play. The number was just half of this in February 2016.

A year ago, Flipkart had crossed 100 million registered customers. Thanks to Jio, internet penetration has spiked in the last one year, which is particularly advantageous for e-commerce in a mobile-first country. Currently, India has over 300 million smartphone users, indicating that Flipkart’s app is present on nearly a third of all smartphones in the country.

A press release from the company has said that Flipkart’s is one among the only three India-specific mobile apps that have crossed this crucial consumer- adoption metric, surpassing downloads of other categories such as payments and transportation.

“In terms of ratings, Flipkart’s app holds a high average score of 4.4 from over four million users on Google Play — the only e-commerce app to have reached that rating in India,” it adds.

Flipkart, which has always claimed to be a tech company before a retail one, was among this year’s MIT Technology Review’s 50 smartest companies globally.

“We are investing heavily in developing innovative features and incorporating fresh design aspects in our app so our customers go through the entire purchase cycle from search to selection to payments in a seamless and user-friendly manner. The 100 million app downloads is a testament to our growing customer base that loves to shop on Flipkart,” said Ravi Garikipati, CTO, Flipkart.

Flipkart claims that its app owes its popularity to its ease of use, low bandwidth and data consumption, and enhanced search capabilities, making it easier to zero in on a product of choice. The 10-year-old company’s biggest rival, Amazon India, has 50 million downloads on Google Play.

Having had a successful festive season sale during its largest event, Big Billion Days, the e-commerce major is set to launch grocery as well — a move that can potentially increase mobile downloads as those products are in the FMCG category.