- The Tata group is reportedly expected to launch a “super app” by December or early next year, taking on rivals Amazon and Reliance Industries (RIL).
The Tata group is reportedly expected to launch a “mega app” by December or early next year, bringing the company into competition with rivals Amazon and Reliance Industries (RIL) in India — the fastest-growing e-commerce sector in the world.
The super app will offer to buy food and groceries, apparel and lifestyle, durables for customers, insurance and financial services, health care, and bill payments. N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons — the $113-billion group holding firm — said to the Financial Times: “It’s going to be a wonderful app, lots of games, and so on. We have a very big shot.
Technology takes on significance after Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani-controlled RIL raised $20 billion from private equity firms and leading technology behemoths Facebook and Google to extend Jio’s base on its digital services. Worth noting here is that the online retail will account for 2.5 percent of India’s gross domestic product ( GDP) by 2030, rising 15 times and touching $300 billion, according to a Goldman Sachs May survey.
“The Tata Group affects several hundred million customers in India, depending on how you count if you take customers who walk in a Tata facility every day How can we offer a simple online experience that links all of this and at the same time a beautiful omnichannel experience? That is the dream”
Currently, there are no specifics of Tata Group’s super app. It is suspected that the Tata Group, which runs the Tata CLiQ fashion shopping app, the StarQuik grocery store, and the Croma online electronics site, provides a bouquet of products and services in the app.
The salt-to-software conglomerate had launched a new company last year to incubate a digital new-age sector called Tata Digital. Many news reports suggested that Chandrasekaran had reported that Tata Sons in the new vertical would infuse Rs 1,000 crore.
Super apps are common in China, where Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan-Dianping owned digital platforms that offer numerous products and services, such as e-commerce, travel bookings, food delivery, and ride bookings, all within the same application. Many observers believe the super app idea is still at a nascent stage in India.
Most online shoppers currently also use various apps around travel, food delivery, and other sectors of e-commerce.
Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that by exploiting the WhatsApp platform and user base, RIL and Facebook were playing with the idea of launching a multi-purpose device, along the lines of Chinese super-app WeChat. The aim was to carry out a mega app where customers could purchase products from Reliance Retail stores, or shop at ajio.com, or make payments using JioMoney, as well.
