Mobile Apps for NGOs

Has your NGO faced the challenge of connecting with stakeholders? If your NGO is working in a domain where your stakeholders have all easy access to laptops or desktop computers, then probably you must have figured out that the easiest way to stay connected is through your websites.

However, chances are that the profile of your majority stakeholders is such that they belong to low-income groups, illiterate people, living in remote areas, lacking 24x7 electricity support, poor data connection / network, and to expect your stakeholders to be easily accessible to you is almost impossible. First, they may not have easy access to laptops or desktop computers to stay connected through your website. Then, they will have electricity coming on and off, and it would be difficult for them to keep even their devices in charged conditions at all times. And even if they somehow manage to do that, then the data network would be so bad that accessing internet could become a task in itself.

A mobile app can be a great switchover for NGOs in changing times. We have seen that the success of mobile platforms has brought about a revolution in various industries.  Today mobile phone has become the most popular device for accessing Internet. With India emerging as the country having the highest number of Internet users, it is the right time for NGOs in India to invest in mobile apps, rather than invest on having a website.

NGOs have been engaging with their stakeholders through their websites for donations and volunteerism, but a mobile app can quickly emerge as an entirely new way to connect with constituencies. Mobile apps are all about approaching and engaging with members in an altogether new technological setup, and offering them a totally different experience for receiving information as compared to websites.

A mobile app is technologically far superior to a website for any interaction between companies or institutions on the one hand and the end user on the other. A customized application downloaded to the smart phones or tablets is easy to use and can facilitate not only easy communication but also direct and open communication with users, because mobile phones are carried by the users all the time, wherever they are and whatever they are doing. There can always be push messages delivered to target groups and also ensure its immediate delivery.

So, if your NGO is working on farmer’s literacy or women’s health, it is far easier for you to reach out to your stakeholders and pass on important information to them through mobile apps. This is not just easy to operate and download, but this medium can be easily used to collect or pass on desired information through this channel on almost real time basis. This is much easier and cost-effective compared to making physical contact every time.

NGOs get a substantial part of their funds through sponsorship and raising fund is always the most tedious tasks for them. They often times hire professionals who are assigned the responsibility to approach potential donors to be able to carry out their activities. Mobile apps increase their base of potential donors multiple times and this can ease their fundraising task. While personally approaching the big donors may still be required, the facility to donate with just a click on their mobile phone can motivate a number of people who were earlier not connected with the NGO at all.

Because the majority of stakeholders are from rural and low-income groups not having access to English language, the mobile apps can only be effective if they are presented to end users in their vernacular language. Anant Computing Platform facilitates vernacular app development tools with robust vernacular keyboards so that there is no barrier to communicating with people in different linguistic regions.

If your NGO is working in different domains, you can segregate your apps and then put them in a common AppWallet for easy access. The apps developed on Anant platform are designed to be light without consuming lots of memory space and they run on every OS, so that your NGO doesn’t have to worry about the compatibility issues with different kinds of mobile phones, both high end and low end and different operating systems.

High Time for FMCG Brands to Occupy Mobile Screen Space

Indian FMCG sector has reached that stage in its lifecycle where it is poised for an exponential growth and there are clear indicators for this scenario in the market. The income levels of the working class and the rural population has been increasing at a phenomenal rate in the last few years.

There is a market segment out there waiting to be captured for all kinds of consumer goods. As per report of India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), about two third of the revenue from FMCG sector is generated from urban market, whereas only one-third is from the rural population. This is quite in contrast to the urban rural demographic profile according to which the majority of the Indian population is living in rural areas. Of course, there is an issue of the income-driven demand, or rather lack of it in rural areas, but the increasing income level in rural areas is also translating slowly and slowly into brand consciousness among rural masses.

The single biggest reason, however, for the projected upswing of the market in FMCG sector is the digital revolution taking place in India at phenomenal speed. India stands at the threshold of rapid growth in Internet usage and e-commerce activity. According to a study by Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International, India has already surpassed the US market to become the second largest base of internet users in the world after China. The study also indicates that the online penetration here could reach well over 50 percent by the year 2020.

The growing demand can be encashed by manipulating technology. FMCG sales were traditionally driven through retail outlets with a market driving or push strategy by local vendors. Marketing of the product was usually done on radio, TV or daily newspapers. The Internet boom signaled a paradigm shift from retail stores to websites. Brands improved their visibility by enhancing their web presence.

The digital revolution through mobile phones or smart phones is bringing about yet another revolutionary change, which has not so far been well captured by FMCG market players. It is surprising to note that despite the huge number of mobile phone users in India, the e-commerce market is a very small percentage of the total market size in FMCG segment.

Mobile phones could offer FMCG companies the chance to create greater shopper loyalty because of ease of purchasing experience. However, to achieve any significant success on this front, FMCG brands need to first of all reinvent or rewrite their relationship with shoppers. They have to spend less time thinking about how to influence a single purchase decision and think more about what better ways they could devise to connect with individual shoppers of different demographic profile on an ongoing basis.

Market experts believe that to make you mobile app a hit it is essential to make it relevant and provide a good user experience. Brands while creating an app must focus on how their prospective customers will like to interact with them. By simply replicating their existing web presence and transporting that concept to mobile screens will not serve the purpose. Companies need to invest in having the right kind of features as well as functionalities on their apps to help their brands evolve and grow.

In the coming years, rural population of India will be the main customer base driving the growth of FMCG Sector. App in all Indian languages by Anant Computing Platform is a brilliant concept to interact with customers with the idea to speak with them in a language that is understood by them. AppWallet feature allows companies to push their campaigns through mobile apps downloaded by the customers. With an automatic update feature, the customer has the information about the latest and most updated product launched by businesses right at their fingertips.

Bringing M-Banking services to the fingertips of rural India

Mobile banking services emerged as a tool to facilitate transaction of money for bank customers in developed countries involving domestic and international remittances, mobile payments such as merchant payments or payment of utility bills. However, in recent years, its scope and coverage has widened quite significantly.

Mobile banking today has become very popular in developing world as well to provide better services for existing customers as well as acquire new ones who are living in remote areas and where even the nearest bank could be quite far off. It is because of this reason that this mode is being adopted by various non-conventional sectors in recent times. Microfinance institutions are also realizing that using mobile financial services is much more efficient and convenient, and much less costly than the traditional model when it comes to delivering microfinance services.  

The microfinance institutions in India have played an important role in bringing the low income people into the mainstream of financial services. However, there is still a huge population in India which is yet to be tapped for microfinance services, and one of the possible reasons may be the on the part of microfinance institutions not utilizing the modern technology. 

Microfinance institutions face two key barriers to achieving scale. One is the operational inefficiency and the other is high operational cost. Both these factors are responsible for high interest rates. Most microfinance companies are concerned about ways and means through which infrastructure and operational costs can be reduced, and branchless banking is one such viable solution for them.

Looking at the state of development of mobile technology as well as a greater affordability of mobile devices including smart phone as compared to the situation a few years back, mobile money has great potential to help microfinance institutions transform their business model and achieve economy of scale. This is particularly true in a developing country such as India, where a person from lower economic strata is more likely to have a smart phone than a bank account. And the rate at which mobile subscription is increasing day by day, it is only a matter of time before every company adopts mobile banking as its principal mode of financial inclusion.

M-Banking could mean better reach to poor and rural people more efficient operation which may allow MFI’s lower loan costs and higher repayment rate. Mobile banking that provides banking facilities in an efficient and convenient way can play an important role in facilitating microfinance services to population so far out of the system. Adopting M-Banking platforms by microfinance institutions as an alternative delivery channel can facilitate greater outreach to remote areas, reduce costs and enhance existing customer convenience. It can be used for loan repayment, checking account balance and voluntary savings deposits. M-banking can provide microfinance clients greater flexibility by managing their payment and deposits right at their fingertip.

Mobile phones have not only the potential to develop more cost-effective microfinance business models, but can also provide an opportunity to expand financial inclusion by way of reaching the unbanked. Moreover, the mobile phone can also improve existing services through greater transparency and more convenient access to various services outside the normal banking hours.

Mobile banking has been adopted very successfully in some countries, such as Kenya. However, while mobile banking was a rapid phenomenon in Kenya, its adoption rate was painstakingly slow in even the neighbouring countries of Kenya, such as Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. In India, a few pilot projects focusing on mobile banking services in microfinance were carried out in a few states. But, the key learning from such experiments is that every mobile financial services package has to be tailored not only to the country, but to the region as well, and it is even more important in a country like India having so much of linguistic and cultural diversity resulting in vastly different profile of the clients in different geographical regions.

Before the market is cluttered by the companies getting involved in a cutthroat competition, the right time is now for the microfinance institutions to adopt this as the principal tool of their business. The need of the hour is to align with mobile app development companies, get the right apps for their products and get to their customers before others start doing it. It is important to seek partners who can help them shift their operations seamlessly to the mobile devices through robust mobile apps.

The services offered by Anant Computing can prove to be the game changer for this industry. Anant Computing Platform has been developed by the company that facilitates creation of mobile apps that can work on both feature phones as well as smart phones, and the apps can run smoothly even offline. It is possible to develop rich apps with size less than 1/10th of usual mobile applications, and are designed to run perfectly on low memory phones. The platform also allows personalized on-screen keyboards in various Indian languages and the user gets to choose the language they prefer from the same app.

The Digital Solution to Problems of Micro Finance Institutions

Micro finance is a fragmented but huge industry, close to $70 billion in terms of aggregated loan, serving about 150 million people globally and consisting of not less than 10,000 micro finance institutions. These are indeed impressive figures, but ground realities are much less rosy, and the industry suffers from some fundamental problems.

The industry suffers from certain client related problems such as attracting new clients, retaining existing clients and lack of information about existing and potential clients. Then there are staff related problems such as educational level and skill development of staff.  

However, the more fundamental problems faced by the industry are the system related problems such as high cost, profit performance and interest rate. Any micro finance institution lending out small loans has to keep doing a balancing exercise between the interest rate and loan repayment. To ensure a high rate of loan repayment, companies need to employ lots of field force who can work in the field doing background checks, disbursement of loan, follow-up on the clients and loan collection. But these activities cost money, which increase the interest rate that borrowers have to pay. On the other hand, there is always the pressure to keep the interest rate low because of repayment ability of borrowers who are mostly poor.

Micro finance companies often try putting more emphasis on high repayment rates, which means they recruit field staffs for all types of jobs and seem inclined to open offices in all their areas of operations. But this obviously leads to very high interest rates, and in turn affects the growth potential and profit performance of the industry. 

This is where the digital solutions have the potential to revolutionize the industry. You can cut cost by a huge margin if you take everything online. There are no offices; there are minimum field staffs with all the client information stored in their portable digital devices. And the best and easiest digital device for this kind of activity is the mobile phone well supported by a robust mobile app. 

The solution offered by Anant Computing has the potential to prove a game changer for this industry. ACP or the Anant Computing Platform, the company is building to facilitate creation of mobile apps can work on both feature phones and smart phones and it work on all kinds of OS. The microfinance companies can hugely benefit from this enabling technology and develop their robust microfinance app to help their field staffs carry out their usual activities, keep all the client information for loan disbursement and also for recovery of loan. 

Apps once developed on Anant do not require the user to keep track of upgrades, as the platform facilitates automatic upgrade of the app without any intervention from the user end. In addition, it is possible to develop rich apps with size less than 1/10th of usual mobile applications. The apps can run smoothly even offline, and are designed to run perfectly on low memory phones. The platform also allows personalized on-screen keyboards in various Indian languages and the user gets to choose the language they prefer from the same app. Using these mobile apps, the field executives can tap and serve the market much more efficiently than with their paper-based operations.

Digital technology is transforming various traditional industry sectors in brilliant ways. Today when technology is affecting almost everything making it efficient, micro finance industry cannot remain untouched for long. However, this may not come easy; there will be hiccups, but they will certainly get eliminated eventually, just as it happens in any emerging industry.

Tapping the Power of Vernacular Microfinance Apps

Digital technology has the potential to help microfinance institutes become more effective and efficient. In today’s digital world, carrying a laptop in the field has become a passé, and the in-thing is to carry whatever you need in your mobile. There are mobile apps that can help loan officers of these companies working in the field maintain their data and help them operate efficiently.

Microfinance companies play a huge role in funding needs of low income population, who do not have access to the banking services. By their very definition, these companies target the customers at the micro level.

This connection is not faceless, however, as it is in the banking sector where there is often a pre-decided check list of documents required for processing any loan application. You approach the loan officer, submit the required documents related to your paying abilities and the loan needs. The system feeds your details into a software module that decides whether you are a safe borrower or not, and comes out with a credit score to assess the risk involved in bank extending credit to you. The repayment of the loan is also more or less automated and every month, a fixed amount goes out of your bank account towards repayment of the loan.

In a microfinance institution, this interaction is at a very personal level. The decision to sanction the loan depends on a lot of factors that are often not clearly defined or articulated by the head offices, because ground realities at the rural level among the low income group are vastly different from the scenario of a typical small or middle income borrower from a regular banking institution. The loan officers often have to create an emotional connection with their borrowers before loan reaching maturity, because they get to know about borrowers’ personal life as well as family and they also demonstrate affection in different ways as a part of their strategy to generate pressure or facilitate recovery.

In such a scenario, it is not difficult to see why the loan officer in a microfinance company has to be a local man or woman, speaking the language of the people he or she is interacting with and conversant with the socio-economic milieu of the area of their operation. It is also important from the point of view of cutting cost as most microfinance companies do not have much scope for overhead expenses and they often try to minimize their cost on this account. Hiring someone from local area is definitely much less expensive than cost involved in retaining an English speaking field executive from urban setting.

It is precisely this reason that makes the digital inclusion in microfinance institutes a difficult task also, because these local recruits are generally not very comfortable with English language which is the main language of majority of the apps. A vernacular microfinance app that works in the local language that people of the region speak can be the best bet for someone recruited locally to cater to the needs of the village itself.

Making vernacular apps by Anant Computing has been a highly innovative move with the kind of language support it offers. It can provide support in all Indian languages, even if the operating system does not support them, and the app comes with personalized OnScreen Keyboards in all languages, and the audience gets to choose the language they prefer from the same app. A loan officer working on a mobile app with the local language displayed on the mobile screen has definitely a better chance of getting the confidence of the local population one is trying to connect with to generate business for the company.

Microfinance apps: Getting the last mile connectivity of the market

Microfinance Institutes or MFIs tap entrepreneurial resources at the lowest level of economic stratum and create opportunities for those with limited pocket size. They may have limited penny in their pocket to execute their entrepreneurial ideas, but taken together they constitute a huge market for microfinance companies through microcredit.

They empower unbanked entrepreneurs with adequate funding and enable them to grow their business. In the last decade, the industry has experienced a significant growth and now, it is the right time to leverage mobile technology to use it to improve their operational efficiency as well as better control over the process of selection of potential customers and loan recovery.

It has been estimated that by the end of 2016, 75% of India’s population will have a mobile phone and MFIs must explore ways to use mobile technology effectively. Mobile applications can be very helpful for microfinance institutes mainly because the potential customer base is extremely fragmented geographically and it may not be possible for the field staff to carry their laptops everywhere while approaching their existing or potential customers. The wireless capabilities of mobiles like bluetooth, GPRS/3G can be quite convenient for field officers even in the remotest corners of India. Mobile apps can streamline their operation, reduce the overall cost and can also in turn increase their reach apart from improving the quality of service.

The Microfinance industry in India is still largely paper based as far as the process of customer acquisition, loan collection system and loan disbursements are involved. This system makes the task quite tedious and also increases the overall operational cost. There is also less control over field officers who are responsible for the distribution and collection of the loan. MFIs need to rethink their traditional operating models and reevaluate their future strategy for improving their operational efficiency.

Automating the process of customer enrolment, distribution of loan and collection process, based on cutting edge, full proof and efficient mobile technology, MFI can handle large amount of data quite conveniently. It can also overcome various challenges and limitations that the sector faces in the present paper-based loan disbursement and collection process.

With India’s large base of low income group population and the increasing popularity of smart phones across all levels of socio-economic strata, there are some microfinance companies, which have already started adopting mobile apps for their smooth functioning. However, one of the greatest challenges that MFIs face is in this regard is to have an app that is compatible across all kinds of phones and all OS.

There are a few companies, such as Anant Computing, which are addressing this very issue in the new platform the company is building to facilitate creation of mobile apps, which work on both feature phones and smartphones, work on all kinds of OS, and there is no need to upgrade the app if the operating system is upgraded. In addition, the company has also worked on the technology to make the rich apps with size less than 1/10th of usual mobile applications. With apps running smoothly even offline, and designed to run perfectly on low memory phones, these mobile apps could be the game changer for the microfinance companies in the sense that their field executives can tap and serve the market in a much better way than they used to do with a largely paper-based data system.

Digital Education: Is It Really A Panacea to All Cures?

The number of students attending schools in Indian villages is rising, but another shocking study shows that the majority of the students of class sixth in rural India cannot read even a class second text book and are unable to solve simple mathematical problems.

The statistics is a clear indicator that even though the education sector has witnessed a significant horizontal growth at the national level in the last few years, yet the access to quality education is confined only to urban and semi urban population. There are reasons for this state of affairs. The poor infrastructure, lack of committed teachers, lack of good study materials and textbooks and an extremely high students-teacher ratio are some of the main factors responsible for this state of affairs.

The issue is - how to address this problem! It’s a huge task given that it’s not easy to solve some of the basic challenges confronting this sector. Is there some out-of-the-box solution for this problem! Technology is often seen as the panacea for all the problems and this has been the focus of the policy makers in recent times for addressing development related issues in various sectors including education. The government is putting in a lot of effort to make technology-enabled schools in villages to improve the quality of education, but without a clear vision and direction, this is yet to translate into some positive and concrete results. As a result, huge amount of government fund is going down the drain.

But implementing digital education in villages has its own sets of challenges. Some of the main deterrents are poor Internet connectivity and limited exposure of technology to rural teachers given their low to average level of exposure. Language is also supposed to be a big barrier as teachers as well as students are not comfortable with English language which is the main language in the digital world.

There is probably a big opportunity waiting to be uncovered through some path-breaking innovative technology to address these basic, yet fundamental problems facing the rural spectrum. Can digital technology firms, companies involved in developing digital learning apps, mobile apps rise to the occasion to meet the challenge? Only time has the answer whether digital technology can help bridge the gap between urban and rural education, which is more of a haves and a have-nots divide.

The fluid state of mobile technology

The turn of the last millennium witnessed some real challenges. The first was the now infamous Y2K that wasn’t as bad a virus as it was projected to be, and the second was the dot com boom followed soon after by a bubble burst that shook the economy across the globe. On an equal scale is the challenge posed by the market on the mobile technology in the present decade, which unless addressed in the right perspective, has the potential to shake the global economy the same way as dot com revolution did in the late 90s.

Mobile apps have brought about a kind of revolution in the way people use digital technology. It is probably the single biggest breakthrough after internet revolution that took the world by storm about 25 years back. But the landscape for mobile apps is changing very fast in recent years. If the mobile app developing companies do not match the market expectations, it may be extremely difficult for them to survive the onslaught of market dynamics.

·         Mobile apps developers have to focus more and more on improving user experience. They have to ensure that what they develop should work seamlessly across all screen size and devices. Single app for all phones can add value to their brand.

·         App developers must adopt full proof and up-to-date measures to secure their apps infrastructure. Majority of us store important information in our phones, to which many of the apps resting in our phones have access. To keep all kinds of data and information including those relating to transactions safe, we are also willing to pay more.

·         Certain sectors such as health care institutes and banks are prone to attracting cyber criminals, and data security is extremely critical for such users. App developers have to take special care of the security concerns of vulnerable sectors.

·         There is a huge market for apps developed in vernacular languages. In a country like India, where smart phone user population is growing rapidly, there are millions of people who do not understand English. Addressing their need should be the prime concern of app development companies.

·         It’s an age of travelling light with minimum baggage. The same applies to the apps that you carry in your smart phone. People expect light apps with minimum memory space and nothing that starts eating your RAM or makes your phone slow.

These are some of the few market realities that sooner or later the companies will have to come to terms with in the rapidly changing digital landscape.

Mobile Apps: Preparing for Gen-next Offline Ecosystem

Google offering YouTube videos in offline mode in Indian market was a masterstroke. It was like touching the nerve of an average Indian user, irrespective of his social or economic status, geographical location, literacy level or age. Surprisingly, for all kinds of mobile users in India, whether in rural or urban areas, young or old, the price elasticity of demand for data usage is quite high, meaning thereby that the amount of data they use is very sensitive to the price they have to pay for it.

A large part of this high price elasticity is psychological as people tend to minimize their monthly expenditure on data plans they buy by resorting to means which are often not quite understandable. After all, a young student switching off his data on his mobile phone when he is watching a movie does not make any sense given that he does not even think twice before spending 500 bucks for a single show in the multiplex and spending another 200 on his popcorn bucket during interval. But it is also about extremely high cost of data usage vis-à-vis the hourly wages in India in comparison to many other developing countries that explains this kind of behaviour. A comparison with developed economies, on the other hand would in fact make the price of data usage in India appear prohibitively expensive.

Any app, if it has to be downloaded to make it functional, has to be downloaded online. But, how much data an app will use when it is being downloaded or when it is being used subsequently can put apps in vastly different categories, and make an app more or less attractive to a user who is sensitive about his data bill. The first differentiator is, of course the app size; a user is generally put off when the app is more than a certain size, and the size will depend on what kind of phone you are using, whether it’s a high end phone or a cheap handset with cramped memory space. And it’s a reality not worth ignoring by the app developers that a large majority of handsets have low memory space and a user might get put off by an app even of the size more than 8 to 10 MB.

The next differentiator is the data usage when the app is being run for use. There are apps that do not require internet connectivity at this stage or require connectivity for 50% of the time, so that the rest of the time, the application is running on offline internet. This is a kind of hybrid offline-online ecosystem, but it also means a trade-off has to be made between how much data needs to be stored in the handset’s memory to enable it to work to its full potential in an offline environment.

App developers who are economizing on the app size may be gaining a crucial competitive edge here. And there are companies which are addressing the size issues from a different strategy. Anant Computing Platform, for instance, works on this fundamental idea of enabling development of apps at almost one-tenth size of usual mobile applications, and they run smoothly even offline. They facilitate development of apps that run perfectly on low memory space phones.

The gen-next phones are most likely going to be offline primarily, and it’s not an over-statement at all when Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Google India says that "India will be the world's largest offline internet market" in the context of YouTube becoming available offline in the Indian market. 

There is a great potential here for app developers who can harp on the idea of minimizing on the app size and making it as much offline as possible in a largely hybrid environment.

World is going Small and so should MobileApps

When the feature phones dominated the mobile phone market, people needed just enough memory space to store their contacts, a few pictures, and maybe some audio files. But the smart phones changed the whole landscape. It was a change whose enormity is yet to sink in completely in the market and the market is yet to achieve the point of saturation to reach the potential capabilities of the phone.

With smart phones overtaking the market, there is no end to what people want to do with the small device that fits in their palm. They want to have lots and lots of pictures, audio & video files, even full length movies, and most of all, lots of apps.

Talking of the apps, there is simply no end to the list of useful apps. There are apps for entertainment, gaming, shopping, reading, learning, information, and for every category of use that one can think of. Any age-group, any socio-cultural profile, geographic region, linguistic background, literacy level, nature of profession one can think off – there are not one or two but hundreds, if not more apps just appropriate for the user.

The market for apps user is huge. There has been a drastic increase in smart phone users in India in the last few years. As per a latest statistics, the number of smart phone users by the end of the year 2016 is estimated to reach around 204.1 million, with the  worldwide number likely to exceed 2 billion users by that time. It’s a readymade market for the app developing companies, which have dotted the market space everywhere across the globe.

Yet the biggest bottleneck to downloading and keeping all the useful apps is the insufficient memory space of the phones, and it’s a real problem that not many app developing companies seem to be genuinely concerned about looking at the huge MB size of some of the apps hitting the market. They don’t realize that the moment you cross a threshold size barrier, which could be as low as even 30 to 40 MB, you are losing out on a big chunk of customers.  

While it’s true that people are spending a lot of money on buying expensive smart phones these days, yet every user doesn’t have a high end device. In a country like India, where a majority of smart phone users come from the low income level because of high concentration of population in rural areas, the market is flooded with inexpensive smart phones and one can get various cheap buying options under Rs 5000 to 6000 bracket.

Now these low cost smart phones have their own challenges and create various problems for app marketers. Some mobiles run on older Android versions, while others just don’t have sufficient memory space, which means that consumers very quickly reach a point when they need to begin uninstalling an app so as to make space for a new one. Naturally, choosing the right apps to keep in one’s phone is a difficult choice and a user has to be constantly struggling with this issue as more and more apps keep flooding the market.

Companies are coming up with large apps making them suitable for high end devices. They are adding more and more features and flashy interactions to attract those users and in the process are losing out on the low-end smart phone users. But, just because your phone does not have enough free space does not imply that you cannot have good apps in your phone.

App developers need to target the low end smart phone user by developing good apps that occupy less space in the phone. If they do not focus on making light apps there are high chances that their apps may get deleted immediately after downloading due to space constrain.

Making light apps may be often a trade-off between memory space and the app features. But there are companies that are addressing this issue and trying to figure out how to have the best of both. Anant Computing Platform is actively marketing itself claiming to help businesses develop light apps without compromising on features and quality. It claims reducing the size of a rich and heavy app to as much as 1/10th of a usual mobile application. You can have apps that can rest in your phone without taking much space but have all the functionalities of a rich and heavy app.

The punch line of the company says – “With Anant Computing, no more compromising on rich features because of the ever growing app size.” The idea is indeed revolutionary and has the potential to change the landscape of app development market!

Adult Literacy Initiative Through Mobile Applications

This is an age of “segmentation”, and as the marketing gurus call it – the “one-size-fits-all” strategy does not work. A company has written the script for its own failure if it does that. But segmentation based marketing strategy is never easy and as put very bluntly by Steve Jobs – “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time, you get it built, they’ll want something new”.

It can’t be more true especially in the digital market space. People have different level of digital literacy based on myriad number of socio-economic factors, age, profession, gender, and so on. The segmentation that is required is often too expensive a choice for firms, and is a difficult trade-off decision at the top.

For mobile apps, targeting adults and segregating them from the younger generation is not a choice; it’s more of a compulsion. Mobile apps are emerging as new learning tools not just for children and teenagers but for adults as well. However, app developers have not realised the true potential of adult literacy apps and there are not enough apps that cater the targeted audience in this category.

For an app to become successful, it is a very important that its design must focus on its target audience. Apps made for younger students cannot cater to the needs of adult students. Younger students have been growing up with this technology and so they have different expectations from learners of advanced age. Adult learners require ease and convenience of use, which is a lot more demanding need to fulfil as compared to the requirements of the young learners. Targeting this group means meeting the high expectations that they have from their mobile devices.

To appeal to adults, any educational app has to have an intuitive design and easy interface. Often a short tutorial on navigate within the app could prove to be very helpful. Adults can learn quickly but can also get frustrated easily and quickly.

These are basically issues of designs. There are various other issues as well that may trouble the adult learners. For instance, the need to update apps could be a nightmare given the speed at which apps are updated these days. Then, the sheer number of apps residing on the mobile phones today is at times scary even for the well initiated.

Imagine the plight of someone who isn’t too comfortable, and then having to organise his or her apps on the mobile devices. The auto update and the app bundling feature of Anant Computing Platform could prove to be a winner for your firm.

The ease with which Anant provides vernacular support in different Indian languages also means that this platform is capable of addressing the adult learners coming from different geographical and linguistic regions. The more segmentation you go for, the more your development cost is going to be. But this feature combined with the portability of apps across different OS will certainly compensate for the additional cost of development for different linguistic segments and different mobile devices working on diverse OS. Add to it the minuscule memory space required for apps bundled into Anant AppWallet and you could just be on the way to a real deal clincher.

Digital Education: Matching the Supply with Demand

There are a few recent studies that tell a lot about the changing landscape in the education sector:

• Education is the third most popular category in the downloaded apps from Apple's App Store.
• Mobile learning market worldwide is projected to touch $37 billion mark by 2020.
• Accenture 2014 Global Value of Higher Education Survey, based on a sample size of about 1500 across UK, US, Singapore, Australia and India has reported that about 70% of recent graduates and higher education students want institutions to use more and more of digital tools.
• By 2020, 98% of students are expected to use blended learning consisting of classroom as well as online components.
• Gaming has become a major learning technique. Whether you call it educational entertainment or academic game play, it has become a popular trend.

All these are indicators of the changing scenario of the way education is imparted to students at various levels. In fact, not just students, even companies are realizing the power of digital learning for corporate trainings. As per Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, the corporate digital market is set to overtake the learning in the traditional conference room settings of corporate headquarters.

While there is no doubt that there is huge demand for digital learning apps, the challenge before the apps development companies is that digital learning tools should be made more interactive and fun to enhance retention. Digital education is still a relatively young industry and it requires new and breakthrough models to make it exciting and interesting.

First of all, there are very few players who are offering course content catering to the diverse needs of learners. Then, there are issues of enabling technology that can address the hurdles like affordability, accessibility, mode of delivery, etc. AppWallet feature of Anant computing platform is remarkable in many ways in the sense that it allows different learning tools to be bundled for different customer groups based on their educational and socio-economic profile and needs. Low memory space, automatic update and auto app discovery are a few other features that the fast paced student community of today would be willing to embrace with open arms.

Bringing Rural Women into the Digital Fold

There are clear signs of a significant demographic shift in the internet users in the last few years in India. According to a recent report by Boston Consulting Group, a large proportion of the new internet users consist of female, rural, older, vernacular speakers and the mobile phone users. This demographic shift means that there are clear signals for apps development companies to reposition themselves by realigning their business and marketing strategy, and rural women, are now a critical link in their whole business plan.

Healthcare apps

Public healthcare is not very efficient in rural India and women are often the direct sufferers, as they are the primary caregiver for the family. Issues which could be easily treated are often left untreated leading to more serious health issues subsequently. Health apps that offer useful information on pregnancy and child care as well as common prevailing diseases like tuberculoses, malnutrition, and diarrhoea could be of great interest to rural women. Needless to say the features of organizing apps within AppWallet and the auto update feature of the apps contained inside are big plus points for such health apps.

Literacy apps

There is a rising level of aspirations among the new internet user groups, including rural women. The illiteracy rate is quite high among rural women and girls; they have either not attended the school or dropped mid way. But today, this group wants to be not just literate; it wants to go beyond the basic level of literacy to acquire knowledge which has been so far beyond their reach. The vernacular app development tool facilitated by Anant Computing Platform can prove to be the clear winner for getting rural womenfolk into the digital mainstream in a big way.

Entertainment apps

The changing landscape of rural economy has also meant that the rural women are no longer engaged in the routine mundane daily chores all through the day and are looking for doing other things as well such as listening to music, playing games, or doing such entertainment stuff. Apps developed through Anant Computing Platform, once downloaded do not require internet connections for running, and it is something that could prove to be quite an interesting proposition for this group of customer who may be a little concerned about the data download charges.

Getting Farmers into Mobile Apps Industry

Looking at the pace at which the mobile technology has dominated various businesses, apps for agricultural sector have not really taken off in a big way. The reasons are not far to seek; it’s basically a demand driven industry. Companies will make use of all the latest technology and try reaching out to their potential customers if they find they can make substantial increase in their customer base by using that technology. The same principle applies to mobile apps as well.

There is a general perception that the Indian farmer is not tech-savvy in general and this is not completely a false impression. The literacy rate of Indian farmers is at best very marginal and it requires significant individual effort to get to the level of being proficient in using modern gadgets and appliances. However, this landscape is changing rapidly with the immense popularity of smart phones as well as their reach in every rural household in recent times. Farmers, literate or illiterate are now spending big amount on purchasing mobile phones, and this segment of the population is huge enough to be ignored by businesses that deal with them.

But it’s a great challenge capturing this market of non-English speaking population which is comfortable in only the vernacular language, has a general low level of literacy and which is not tech savvy as the educated urban younger generation. Anant Computing Platform has precisely this focus in its features to deal with this challenge. The vernacular app development platform and AppWallet that update automatically are huge plus points when it comes to reaching out to this so far ignored customer segment from the digital revolution.

Manufacturing companies that communicate with farmers for selling their products, such as fertilizers or pesticides, warehousing and marketing companies that come to the aid of storage and marketing of the farmers’produce, the trading companies that are involved in buying or selling the farm produce, or the insurance companies that are involved in crop insurance – they can all benefit by suitably designing apps specifically targeted to this customer segment and bundling their products in proper design using Anant AppWallet.