Make way for the super-apps

By Sandeep Ganediwalla and Anuj Kumar, Special to Gulf News

Consumer shopping behaviour has been evolving rapidly. Earlier, consumers flocked to mom-and-pop stores that typically catered to a single category, then came high-street stores, which were designated areas for multiple single-category stores.

And then came multi-functionality hypermarkets/malls where customers could buy almost everything at a single place. Dubai has been a leader in such multi-functionality experiences. The Dubai Mall and Mall of Emirates are prime examples, where a consumer can cater to their banking needs, plan a travel, watch movies, play, shop for toys, grocery, clothes and eat under a single roof.

On the digital side, super-apps are a close equivalent of this multi-functionality behaviour. Super-apps allow users any number of features or activities that were traditionally performed by multiple stand-alone apps. There are multiple super-apps that are already successful.

Let’s look at each of these requirements.

* Mobile-first customers

Countries such as India, Indonesia and China where super-apps have thrived had mobile-first consumers, i.e., smartphones were more dominant then desktops, while highly developed US and the UK still have significant desktop usage. This is one of the reasons that super-apps are not that common there.

* High traffic and usage frequency

The UAE already has apps across multiple domains that have reached requisite scale and usage to provide customers with multi-functionality. Careem, Noon, Talabat and Etisalat are all potential contenders of emerging as a super-app. Meanwhile, Facebook is already rebranding their other assets such as Instagram and WhatsApp to bring them closer to the Facebook brand.

This coupled with Libra and WhatsApp’s payment feature, the FB marketplace for shopping, and wearables could enable them to make a play in the super-app space.

* Critical mass

A case-in-point, in other mobile-first markets, offline players were not very organised while the GCC has large organised players such as Majid Al Futtaim and Emaar. The former already has a high frequency offline assets such as Carrefour, malls, cinemas and Najm. It is building potentially high frequency digital assets with Wadi, Carrefour and beam.

Similarly, Emaar also has offline and online assets. Such organised players could innovate to provide an omni-channel, multi-functionality experience to consumers and create the first omni-channel super-app.

Sandeep Ganediwalla is Managing Partner, while Anuj Kumar is Manager at Redseer Consulting, Middle East.