India is one huge country, with a vast 1.3 billion population. The country is often labelled as an amalgamation of a hoard of different cultures and traditions, where people speak more than 22 languages. Thus, Indus, a mobile dev startup is focusing its attention towards the development of an enhanced, regional version of the most widely used operating system — Android.
The company boasts of being the second most widely used operating system in the country and has already inked partnerships with most local smartphone maker including likes of Micromax, Karbonn, Intex and Celkon among others. The most recent ones of these include Karbonn and Intex, who will add a significant boost to the company’s market share in the coming months. As for the shipments of Q3’16, these two manufacturers alone accounted for a total of 15.5 percent market share, with Micromax at the second spot with a 10 percent share.
With the rampant increase in sales of international, especially Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Oppo among others, the company is looking to venture out and tap them, reports TechCrunch. Indus wants to grab the attention of overseas manufacturers who’re either looking to the enter the Indian market or are struggling at the bottom rung of shipments.
Commenting on the same, Rakesh Deshmukh, Indus co-founder and CEO says,
Our goal is to get OEMs to sign up. Now we want to go ahead and work with Chinese and international brands.
Indus is solely focused on building a technological solution to meet the real needs of the economic, social and regional diversity of our country. It believes that their customised Android offering, which supports over twelve regional languages and a multitude of features including hybrid swipe keyboard, word and mantra prediction, Indus reader can prove to be a handy offering for their users. The Indus OS also packs in a localised app store coupled with the option of carrier billing, which allows you to purchase stuff via your mobile balance.
Due to an 88 percent Android smartphone penetration in the Indian ecosystem, Indus sees the introduction of local customized products as a huge bankable opportunity. The user interface of the operating system is also customized to make it easy to use — even for first-time smartphone users.
Indus was founded by Akash Dongre, Rakesh Deshmukh, Sudhir Bangarambandi in 2014 and the company has already managed to secure $5 million in two rounds of funding. These rounds saw participation from marquee investors including the likes of Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl, Omidyar Network, and others. As for future fund raising plans, Deshmukh states that the company isn’t actively looking for capital but still expects to top up its coffers in the coming months.
