Indus OS explained

Indus Appstore Private Limited
Former Name:OS Labs Technology (India) Private Limited
Type:Private
Hq Location:Office-2, Floor 4, Wing B, Block A, Salarpuria Softzone, Bellandur Village, Varthur Hobli, Outer Ring Road
Hq Location City:Bangalore
Hq Location Country:India
Products:Indus OS, App Bazaar
Parent:PhonePe (2022–present)

Indus OS is an Indian smartphone application and content discovery platform based on Android, with the aim to unify users, developers and smartphone brands on a single platform and to create an Indian smartphone ecosystem.

The platform is addressing the low smartphone adoption, content consumption and linguistic challenges of Indian markets.[1] The contextual integration provides India's service and content providers a platform to seamlessly distribute their content & services and engage with India's ever-growing smartphone users.[2]

The company is catering to 10 crore+ users[3] and has partnered with OEMs like Samsung, Karbonn, Micromax and 9 other Indian OEMS.

The company's app marketplace, Indus App Bazaar is the largest Indian app store. It has powered Samsung's default app store, Galaxy Store since 2019.[4]

About

Indus OS was founded in 2013 by Rakesh Deshmukh, Akash Dongre and Sudhir B; with all three being alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Hari Padmanabhan, an IIT Kanpur alumni, industry veteran and serial entrepreneur, is a seed investor in the company. The company is funded by various investors such as "Omidyar Network, JSW Ventures, VenturEast, Samsung Ventures & Affle".

Indus OS has offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Singapore and currently has an 84-member team.

First touch OS

Indus OS was initially known as "First Touch OS". In May 2015, Micromax Informatics started shipping the latest version (Unite 3) of its Unite series smartphones with Firstouch OS.[5] The operating system was available in English and 10 Indian languages. A key feature of the operating system was the Swipe-to-translate or Indus Swipe which helped users to translate or transliterate English text in regional languages. The operating system also had its own app marketplace' App Bazaar with over 5,000 applications in regional languages.

In December 2015, Firstouch announced a collaboration with the Government of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology previously known as the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) to introduce text-to-speech technology in regional languages.[6]

Indus App Bazaar

The Indus App Bazaar is India's largest Indian app store. It is available 12 Indian languages namely Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Odia, Punjabi, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and Kannada & English .[7] It has over 4 lakh applications in regional languages. Top publishers on the platform include Truecaller, Amazon, Winzo Games, Blacklight Studio, Sharechat, Junglee Games, Ola, Meesho, MSN, Times Group, Editorji, Inshorts, Rebel Group, Opera News, mpokket, etc.

The product provides various tools to app developers for distribution and promotions along with data insights for targeting and performance analysis.[8] The app store focuses on providing the users with a personalised and localised experience with rich user interface for smooth discovery of apps and content.[9]

Awards and recognition

Investors

The major investors include Omidyar Network, JSW Ventures, VenturEast, Samsung Ventures and Affle.

Notes and References

  1. Aanchal Ghatak, "Indus AppBazaar addressing challenges like language support, content: Rakesh Deshmukh"
  2. Web site: Wisdom . Crypto . 2024-02-21 . Walmart backed PhonePe launches Indus Appstore rival for Google Play Store in India . 2024-02-21 . Smart Crypto Wisdom.
  3. News: Indus App Bazaar crosses 100 million users in India. The Economic Times . 10 September 2020 . Sangani . Priyanka .
  4. Danish Khan, "Samsung steps up software localisation game; inks app store deal with IndusOS"
  5. Harichandan Arakali, "India's Micromax Taps Startup FirsTouch For Android In 10 Regional Languages"
  6. Smart CEO, "Indus OS"
  7. Financial Express, "Indus OS: A platform for apps in Indian languages"
  8. Web site: 2020-08-20. A Real Portal Leading You to an Exciting Future of Your App.. 2020-09-22. Indusos. en-US.
  9. Tushar Mehta, "How Indus App Bazaar is hyper-localizing mobile apps with Indic languages: Interview with Rakesh Deshmukh"
  10. Gulveen Aulakh, "Aadhaar-authenticated OS will be released across Indus' smartphone partners"
  11. The Economic Times, "ET Telecom Awards 2017"
  12. Inkspell, "Digital Startup of the Year"
  13. Rajiv Singh, "How Indus OS became the second largest smartphone operating system in India"
  14. Meha Agarwal, "Meet The Top 50 Emerging Indian Startups From Nasscom Emerge 50 2016 Awards"
  15. 7th Annual 2016, "AEGIS GRAHAM BELL AWARDS"
  16. Sumit Chakraberty, "Indus OS is India's best mobile innovation: GSMA"
  17. TechVorm, "Indus OS Wins Brand of the Year Award"
  18. Sanjay Gupta, "EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35"
  19. Mohd Mustaquim, "SuperStartUps awards 30+ innovative business models"
  20. SME Times, "CII recognizes top innovative cos & startups for 2017"
  21. First Post, "Indian startup Indus OS success story published as a case study, will be distributed by Harvard Business Review"

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Indus OS".

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