The camera, the video recorder, the tape recorder, the audio player, the alarm clock, the calculator, the typewriter, the mail service, and the television have been effectively replaced by a single device called the smartphone. It is evident from this movement that there has been an appeal for any technological innovation that converges multiple utilities into a single utility.
Today, there is an app for almost everything. If you would like to book a cab or order grocery or get restaurant food delivered to your home or would like to request handyman services at home, different apps take care of these requirements. What if there was a single app that can deliver all the utilities without you having a need to go through multiple apps for every need that you might have?
It turns out we already have an answer! These set of applications are called super applications, or super apps as they are commonly abbreviated. Although the concept might not be prominent on the western side of Greenwich-Meridian, the Asian market has produced a lot of super wraps, and some of them have gone on to become multi-billion-dollar ventures. The best examples can be GoJek from Indonesia, PayTM from India, and WeChat from China.
The advantages of super apps
Super apps act more like the Swiss Army knife of the mobile app world. They have multiple mini-programs running within them, offering a diverse range of utilities for the customer, and that too, enabled by a single login.
For the customer, it is a jackpot. Starting from requesting a masseur to booking a cab or even taking a small loan, everything can be done in a single app. This also means that their space on the phone is saved considerably, and they do not have to remember multiple login details.
There are a couple of advantages to the business as well
A lot of super app businesses do not develop all these applications by themselves. They are developed by independent programmers and businesses who would like to increase their visibility by tying up with the super app business. Therefore, the super app keeps adding utilities without having a need to invest in app development.
The super app ecosystem also gives the business access to a lot of previous data. A combination of multiple data streams can help provide users easily. For example, the spending patterns on an e-commerce site, the kind of taxis that a user hires, the average grocery delivery bill of the customer, and a few other details can be used to decide that person’s creditworthiness. This helps the super app efficiently manage its financial services, and that too, with a very minimal degree of risk.
Although it might not seem like an advantage from a business perspective, super apps play a significant role in minimizing the chasm between work, play, convenience, and life. On Monday morning, you can order your office courier to be picked up by using the same app that you use to collect your drinks for your home party on a Saturday night!
It would be noticeable that most of the successful super apps have their own financial wing specializing in micro-financing and small business loans. This is made possible only by the richness of the data that they have.
A closer look at Gojek
Gojek is considered to be the gold standard for super apps. It was created in the most unimaginable countries for such an innovation, Indonesia. In 2015, Gojek launched its app with just services for right healing, courier, grocery delivery, and food delivery.
Today, the Gojek app offers more than 20 different surfaces including but not limited to an e-wallet, taxi, bike rentals, restaurant food delivery, food festivals, event ticketing, pharmacy delivery, massage at home, professional cleaning, bill payments, and even fuel delivery.
Gojek can boast of a formidable portfolio of investors like Google, Facebook, Mitsubishi, PayPal, Sequoia Cap, Tencent, and Visa. It was the first Unicorn from Indonesia, and it has acquired a series of companies in Indonesia and India.
Gojek has gone on to establish development centers in Bangalore and Gurgaon in India, and the company was valued at a staggering $10 billion in 2020, which is a massive leap from the $5 million valuations in February 2018. It has been featured in the coveted list of 50 companies to change the world by the Fortune magazine in 2017 and 2019. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gojek is one of the most significant contributors to the Indonesian economy’s growth.
Building an app like Gojek
Considering the lucrativeness of super apps, any aspiring entrepreneur would want to build an app like Gojek to launch the business. Building the app from scratch, however, would be a cumbersome and daunting task. It involves either hiring your own team of developers or partnering with a company to have your mobile app developed.
Both of these options can be expensive and might cost you a lot in terms of both time and money. It might involve multiple alterations until you perfect the product in such a way that it is ready to hit the market.
Alternatively, you can consider using a Gojek clone app. A white label Gojek clone script is easy to customize and is available as a product off-the-shelf. This saves you on quite a lot of time that you would spend in development and coding. Since the product is already perfected, you can be assured that the Gojek clone app does not have any bugs that might interfere with its basic functionality.
The customizability of the Gojek clone script is what makes it unique. You can garnish the app with all your business elements, including but not limited to the branding and features. While under the hood, it might be already made a product, the user interface will not reflect what the skeleton is.
Choosing the right development partner
Even when it comes to Gojek clone, meticulous care has to be taken to find the right company that you can entrust the customization too. A simple search on search engines might give you quite a lot of results and options. However, finding the right company that fits your business requirement could be a challenge.
We have compiled below a few pointers that you can use to find out if the company is the right fit for your Gojek clone app.
- Needless to say, the company should specialize in on-demand white-label mobile applications.
- The company should have a rich experience exemplified in its years of operation and the number of apps it has turned out in the recent past.
- The company should already have a product that is good enough to be demonstrated to the client.
- The company should provide the source code of the Gojek clone app along with the purchase.
- The company should not only help in creating the app, but also in launching it on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. If the company has a record of helping your business handle rejections on these app stores, it is undoubtedly an added advantage.
- Above everything, the company should be accessible at least through a dedicated project manager who works exclusively for your app.
Conclusion
At least in specific markets, the profitability of the super app has already been established. If you would like to build your super app, you might have already known that you will need to stick to a white label clone of Gojek and customize it. Keeping in mind the guidelines that have been provided above, you can surely build your app and your business, and that too, without spending a lot of time and money.
