Indian developers continue to push boundaries by building innovative local and global app solutions for many daily needs and complex challenges. Aiming to consistently accelerate the growth of this ecosystem, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Startup Hub and Google are excited to bring back the Appscale Academy program – a growth and development program to train early to mid-stage startups to build high-quality apps for the world.
Appscale Academy’s Class of 2022 saw apps across sectors adapt learnings from the program to improve their UI, UX, security, user base, engagement rates, and ratings. 1 in 3 apps from the cohort doubled their visitor and install base during the program. MeitY Startup Hub and Google are now inviting applications for Appscale Academy’s Class of 2023 aiming to help 100 more promising Indian startups scale their growth stories. This marks the second edition of the Appscale Academy program. 100 startups will get selected based on defined criteria by a panel of industry experts, members of MeitY Startup Hub, and Google.
This year, MeitY Startup Hub and Google are further dialing up their efforts to increase participation from startups beyond metro cities in India. Today, nearly 50% of startups in India come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India. Committed to nurturing a diverse app ecosystem by bringing more startups from these cities into the fold, MeitY Startup Hub and Google will be launching a multi-city roadshow aiming to engage over 1000 startups across emerging hubs like Surat, Indore, Coimbatore, Gangtok, and Jaipur.
Talking about the program, Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said, “India is today one of the largest and fastest-growing startup ecosystems in the world. It’s heartening to see the meaningful impact app developers are driving in India and across the world, and it’s critical that we consistently support these startups to turn their creative ideas into scalable businesses. I’m delighted with the results of the first edition of Appscale Academy and look forward to seeing MeitY Startup Hub and Google come together again to fuel the growth of 100 new startups.”
Akash Tripathi, IAS, CEO, MyGov; Joint Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said, “We are seeing cutting-edge global solutions across a wide range of critical sectors such as health, education, ecommerce, agriculture and more, coming from Indian startups and developers today. This is just the beginning of India’s journey to become a global innovation powerhouse. Programs such as Appscale Academy are playing a critical role in supporting more talent from the ecosystem to make a meaningful impact and we’re glad to work with Google towards this vision.”
Jeet Vijay, Chief Executive Officer, MeitY Startup Hub, added, “Success stories of startups from the first edition of Appscale Academy have been extremely encouraging. It’s also great to see an increasing number of enterprising and creative startups emerge from diverse pockets of the country today. This year, we look forward to partnering with Google again to amp up our efforts towards this community and extend the benefits of the program to more creative app-preneurs from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities through our multi-city roadshow.”
Aditya Swamy, Director, Play Partnerships, Google Play, said, “The lives of many in India are getting transformed by technology, and local app developers and startup founders are the driving force behind this tech-led transformation. India is on its way to becoming a global hub for technology. At Google, we see it as a privilege to partner with this ecosystem enabling their growth story. We are excited to continue our deep partnership with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Startup Hub to help many talented innovators turn their creative ideas into successful app businesses through Appscale Academy.”
The second edition will mark a six-month program through which startups will be trained on several aspects of building successful apps, including UX design, business model and monetization strategies, international expansion best practices, and data safety and security practices. Startups will have access to virtual instructor-led webinars, self-learning material, and mentorship sessions with leading local and global industry leaders. Many will also get an opportunity to pitch to leading venture capitalists.
Applications will be accepted starting today until 6th February, 2023. Hear from few startups from Appscale Academy’s Class of 2022:
Abhilesh Gupta, Co-Founder and Director, AyuRythm: “Appscale Academy helped us build a better user experience leading to a 70% increase in downloads, 33% increase in conversion rate and 25% improvement in ratings. We were able to build a more secure app that is compliant to global privacy, safety and usability standards with the help of the in-depth app quality report provided to us as part of the program.”
Anshul Kamath, Co-Founder, Evolve: “The structure of the program, the thought put into every session, and the mentors chosen for us were truly helpful. We were able to accelerate our progress on several fronts with the help of the program. Our crash rates on the app reduced from 4% to under 0.5%, our app rating went up from 4.6 to 4.8.”
Pritesh Sankhe, Founder, Gratitude: “The program made us focus on the app fundamentals and gave us an opportunity to get expert feedback and suggestions from the community. Learnings from the Appscale Academy helped improve our store listing visitors by 100%, acquisitions by 125% and grew our monthly revenue by 50%.”
Garima Kaushal, Co-Founder, Sploot, “The program helped us a great deal by highlighting the potential risks in our app and giving us a detailed understanding of how to fix the issues. From the many sessions we had focussed on analysing user metrics, we’ve been able to effectively tweak our product.”
Amritanshu Kumar, Founder, KidEx: “We witnessed exponential growth during the Appscale Academy program with improvements in our store presence, app performance, and reduction in acquisition costs by 50%. The program helped us visualize our journey of the next 2-3 years in a more efficient manner.”
