Apps with Chinese characteristics hit obstacles in India

Chinese mobile applications are expanding to emerging markets such as India in an effort to tap new growth, but cultural differences and a competitive market environment have proven to be major barriers, impeding their wide spread adoption, according to industry experts.

WeChat, a hugely popular message app in China developed by Tencent, ranks a distant 289th on the free app ranking at Google Play Store for India, the centralised market place for android apps. WeChat officially entered India in 2012.

“The main reason why WeChat is not doing as well in India as we do is that we are very local,” said Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder of home-grown messaging app hike messenger, which currently ranks 31st among free apps at Google Play.

The app is equipped with features such as emojis(in-text image) showing greetings in numerous local languages and a function that provides details of the latest cricket matches, the most popular sport in India.

“It is not surprising [that WeChat is not doing well in India] because the China market is huge but very inward and isolated, so they ended up building an app for China not for the world,” said Mittal.