At the first ever Google Play App Excellence Summit in India, Google today announced its new ‘Made for India’ initiative.

As part of the initiative, Indian developers can apply for a chance to have apps that are specifically optimized for the Indian market to be showcased on the Google Play Store in India in a special section.

Made for India is an initiative to discover and showcase developers who are building high quality apps and optimizing them for Indian users. All you have to do is to apply at g.co/play/madeforindia.

Specifically, the company is looking for factors like innovation, minimized data consumption, optimized battery consumption, optimized for internet connectivity, useful offline state, device compatibility for apps, app size reduction, and localization support.

The reason for Google’s interest in the market is obvious. More than 70% of internet users in India go online primarily via their smartphones and this number is growing at a phenomenal rate. Interestingly, there are now more people using Android devices in India than in the US.

During her note to kick off the summit earlier today, Purnima Kochikar, Director – Business Development, Google Play, shared that people in India install more than a billion apps every month from Google Play. And while this is a staggering number already, the number of apps installed in India has grown by 150% each year.

Since Google has introduced diverse and convenient forms of payment for Indian consumers, the consumer spend on apps and games is growing at 3X in India.

At the summit, Google brought together over 700 Indian app and games developers, where the company shared tips and tools to help developers create the best quality Android apps that are locally relevant.

Last year, Google announced ‘Build for Billions’ guidelines to help developers overcome challenges such as varying network connectivity, device specifications, and high data costs. The playbook, available on Google Play, is a step-by-step guide for developers to learn about the features, tools, and best practices to get apps ready to meet the needs of billions of Android users in India as well as globally.

With initiatives like ‘Build for Billions’ and ‘Make for India’, Google aims to help Indian developers of all sizes build successful, locally relevant businesses.