25 percent of all mobile users in Indonesia download content at least once a month, according to the Mobile Marketing Association. That’s in a smartphone market projected to reach more than 132 million users by 2017. Those are encouraging numbers for Stanley Tan from Indonesian Android app store Oomph.
Much like Apple’s App Store or Google Play, Oomph is a content distributor. The key difference is that it’s tailor-made just for the Indonesian Android market. It also lets customers pay for their downloads via prepaid mobile credit, which is commonly referred to as “pulsa” in Bahasa Indonesia. Google Play does not support carrier billing in Indonesia.
Tan says he believes his company can become Indonesia’s answer to Google Play. “We believe that there isn’t a single solution that would work for all markets. We are one solution catered specifically to one market,” Tan explains. He adds: “The mobile market is huge enough, and users do not need to go to Google Play.”
Tan claims to have been in the mobile content business for the past 17 years – 11 of which in Indonesia. That predates the release of the world’s first Blackberry phone in 1999. According to Tan, complications in Indonesia’s mobile content market arose during 2011 as local players were charging customers outrageously large fees for downloads. Tan references this point in time as the reason he started Oomph.
Third-party app stores like Baidu’s MoboMarket and XL Axiata’s Gudang App have popped up in Indonesia in the past two years. But Tan says his three-year-old company has the benefit of being the first. Oomph’s direct competitors are Samsung, Amazon, and Google, but Tan believes that Chinese Android stores will also enter Indonesia soon. In China, alternative Android app stores are a billion-dollar business.
See: Google Play opens to developers in new Southeast Asian countries
To date, Oomph has partnered with several content and mobile phone players. The startup’s list of partners includes EA Games, SEGA, Polytron, Baidu, and local game studio Altermyth. It also makes white label applications for Advan Digital, Nexian, and Smartfren.
According to Tan, Oomph currently has more than 4.5 million registered users. He defines active users as people who visit Oomph and browse. Based on that criteria, Tan claims Oomphs has a daily user activity rate of five percent, a monthly rate of 48 percent, and a quarterly rate of 78 percent. Tan says Oomph is getting more than 10,000 new users per day, and believes his product will reach 10 million users by the end of next year.
Oomph monetizes on a pay-per-download basis, but may also soon bring advertising into its store. Tan did not share information on Oomph’s current revenue or future projections.
This startup wants to be Indonesia’s answer to Google Play
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