PhonePe unveils Indus Appstore to compete with Google Play Store in India: Report

The Indus Appstore will not require developers to pay an application listing fee until April 2025.

According to Bloomberg, PhonePe, a fintech company owned by Walmart Inc., has introduced a mobile application store for users in India.

PhonePe announced the name of the Android-based shop, Indus Appstore, in a statement on Februrary 21, 2024. The product is being compared to Google's Play shop. More than 2,00,000 mobile games and apps in 12 Indian languages will be available on the shop.

The decision was made as PhonePe looks to take advantage of the expanding mobile market in the second-biggest smartphone market globally.

CEO Sameer Nigam suggested that the group is also attempting to establish collaborations with smartphone manufacturers and anticipates being live on most major phone brands by the end of the year.

According to the announcement, developers can use any third-party payment gateway of their choice and won't be required to pay an application listing fee until April 2025. In addition, PhonePe Group operates a payments company that rivals Google's GPay and Paytm, which is supported by Ant Group.