Paytm, Jabong and Hotstar tie up with phone makers in a bid to get apps embedded in popular smartphones

NEW DELHI: After launching mobile applications, ecommerce and entertainment companies are now focussing on getting them embedded in some popular models of smartphones, a move aimed at tapping into the large customer base of handset makers.

For instance, Paytm, Jabong and Hotstar have inked deals with handset manufacturers like Micromax, Intex, Spice, Microsoft and Karbonn.

"Up to 75-80% of our sales come through either our smartphone apps or mobile phones. So, mobile strategy is a vital element of marketing for us, especially android platform," said Shankar Nath, senior vice-president of Paytm. Paytm has a partnership with Samsung, Microsoft, Micromax, Lava and Spice for pre-bundling their app on the largest selling models of these handset manufacturers. The Paytm app has seen close to 29 million downloads. Similarly, Jabong has tied up with Microsoft to embed its app in some models of the Lumia series of phones. The partnership will help the ecommerce company reach out to Lumia loyals.

"When an app is already installed on a smartphone, the probability of the consumer using it increases and hence, such tie-ups make sense for us," said Praveen Sinha, co-founder of Jabong. Jabong's transactions through smartphones have increased to up to 50% from 5% about two years ago. As smartphone sales grow about 51% every three months, the mobile commerce market is likely to grow 55% to $19 billion by 2019, from $2 billion now, according to a study by Zinnov.

"Media consumption pa ttern of consumers have changed completely. It will continue to change rapidly in the coming future. We are moving towards the era of wireless communications.So this is the new way towards which marketing and advertising is moving," said Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media. "Brands are looking toward digital marketing strategies more seriously and pre-embedding apps in popular handsets is catching up."

Apps not only facilitate transactions, but also help ecommerce companies know their consumers better through analytics, which in turn help in better targeted advertising.

Mogae Media handles all advertising properties of Airtel across mobile, direct-to-home and broadband. It has the exclusive rights to do the entire m-advertising, m-couponing and m-commerce for t he telecom operator. It's not just ecommerce companies that are taking this route. Hotstar, the mobile-based app of Star network, has a tie-up with Micromax, Panasonic, Karbonn, Lava and Spice to preembed its app on some of their leading models.

Hotstar offers more than 35,000 hours of content in seven languages, ranging from movies and television shows to live sports.