E-commerce dips, education, entertainment see increased screen time during lockdown: AppBazaar

However, education and entertainment have seen increased user engagement and higher returns for developers.

While the ongoing lockdown might have led to increased screen time for users, it has also resulted in reduced business for technology providers. A blog by Indus AppBazar – an indigenous app store – stated that during the lockdown, there has been a dip in e-commerce, travel cabs and ride-sharing categories. However, education and entertainment have seen increased user engagement and higher returns for developers.

The release showed that education, entertainment, gaming and tools were the four categories whose budget has not been impacted during the lockdown. However, business, shopping and travel have been massively affected. The company had changed its strategy from the first week of the lockdown and had added more campaigns from categories, which had seen a surge in activities. Entertainment and gaming saw massive gains, but social and other categories saw the biggest dips.

The company has since calibrated their business campaigns to suit newer trends, and by the third week of the lockdown, they have been able to scale up to 71.3 per cent of the original budgets.

Co-founded by Rakesh Deshmukh, AppBazar claims it is India’s biggest indigenous app store. In 2019, the company had signed a deep product partnership with Samsung India, making it the only Indian technology brand to be powering the Samsung Galaxy store. AppBazaar caters to more than 60 million users in 12 different languages, including Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi and English.