Whatt! PhonePe Hits Directly Against Play Store

Walmart-owned PhonePe, a leading digital payment service in India, has unveiled its own app store for Android users, called Indus Appstore. The launch comes amid growing discontent among Indian app developers over Google’s policies and dominance in the app market.

Indus Appstore claims to be India’s first app store that offers app discovery, personalisation, advertising solutions, cataloguing services, and payment solutions in 12 Indian languages, catering to 95% of Indians’ language preferences..

The app store hosts over 200,000 apps and games, across 45 categories, including popular ones like Bing, Kotak, MapMyIndia, and the government’s DigiLocker. Unlike Google Play Store, Indus Appstore allows app and game developers to choose any third-party payment gateway for in-app billing, and does not charge any commission if they use an external payment gateway. It also offers zero listing fees to developers for one year, until April 1st, 2025.

PhonePe’s founder and CEO Sameer Nigam said that Indus Appstore challenges the status quo, and creates a more competitive and localized mobile app store economy for India. He added that Indus Appstore embodies PhonePe’s commitment to building a truly inclusive digital ecosystem where every Indian user feels at home.

Indus Appstore is currently available as a sideloaded APK from its official website. PhonePe is also in talks with multiple phone manufacturers to pre-load the app store on different Android devices.