An app commerce wave is under way in mobile-first India. Nearly 80% of mobile shoppers are buying things with apps, whereas just a year earlier two-thirds of them were using mobile websites, according to data from digital marketing firm Vizury.

Internet and mobile businesses have responded by going all out to engage users on their apps. Last year, there was a headlong rush to get more and more people to download the apps, but now they’re wiser, looking beyond installs at conversion, retention, and quality of users.



The scene is perfectly set for AppVirality, a growth hacker for mobile apps. This Hyderabad-based startup (headquartered in San Francisco) has a plug-and-play DIY toolkit which makes it easy for app developers and marketers to try out one hack after another, track results, and see what works best for their app. Not surprisingly, it’s much in demand.



AppVirality, which was a Startup Arena finalist at the Tech in Asia Singapore conference in 2014 shortly before its launch, raised $465,000 seed funding in January this year from prominent angel investors including Google India MD Rajan Anandan. Today it announced a fresh round of $500,000 from new investors and several of the existing ones, including the Google India head.



In the 10 months between the two funding rounds, AppVirality’s roster of clients has grown from 20 to over 100 mobile apps, co-founder and CEO Laxman Papineni tells Tech in Asia. These include leading businesses like Paytm, MakeMyTrip, Quikr, Redbus, and Airtel as well as emerging ones like test prep app Byju’s, food ordering app Faaso’s, and MySmartPrice.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here