Empowering SMBs through DIY Apps

Enhancing customer service is one of the primary motive small businesses are planning to launch their own apps, and a lot more of this is expected in the coming months and years. Instead of creating one app for millions of users, brands are now building millions of different apps to serve their small business, local community, or personal needs. DIY apps is one of the main tools fuelling the growth of hyper-local markets.

DIY app building tools are more accessible now and people all over the world are capitalizing on the technology to tap into the ever growing smartphone market.

Plobal Apps is a two years old start-up looking forward to tap the m-commerce space growing at a rapid pace and highly potent app market in India. The concept revolves around DIY (Do It Yourself) Apps.

Started by Atul Poharkar, Aliasger Motiwalla and Abhishek Jain who set out to create a technology platform that provides SMBs with integrated mobile business solutions. The aim was to allow users with no programming skills, create applications for smartphones.

“The purpose is not just to empower non tech business owners in the SMB industry to create an app on their own but also to provide the quickest and easiest platform for an app developer to offer app development solutions to their clients,” said Abhishek Jain, CTO, Plobal Apps.

As people are spending more time on their smartphones, consumer-driven businesses are making it a priority to mark their presence on mobile devices, which has led to the emergence of DIY app start-ups focused on making it easier for small and mid-sized businesses to go mobile.

Most DIY app builders serve the needs of specific markets, and are ideal for businesses that want to connect with mobile customers.  Typically, it can take four to six months to create an app for a client. With a cloud-based DIY platform, this can be done anywhere from within an hour to a day and at a fraction of the cost. The client can customize the basic template himself and add content and widgets.

The two-year old company has over 600 plus live apps, primarily in the food and beverages space, and is also tapping segments such as real estate, adventure sports firm and e-commerce.

We spoke to  Atul Poharkar, CEO and Co-Founder, Plobal Apps to understand their business model and priorities of SMBs and how DIY is helping small and medium businesses to go online and mobile.

DIY App market in India

Currently mobile app development is an extremely complex, costly and time consuming affair for SMBs. SMBs need a platform that helps them to create beautiful native mobile apps in a simple, effortless and cost efficient manner.

With DIY platform, creating native apps becomes esay and it also provides the SMBs with integrated tech solutions (both marketing and business integrations) that assist them to increase their sales, customer satisfaction and enable them to be more competitive overall.

Plobal Apps Founding Team, L to R - Abhishek Jain, CTO, Aliasger Motiwalla, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Sales and Atul Poharkar, CEO and Co-Founder.

“There have been reports suggesting that around  85 per cent of mobile users prefer using apps than mobile sites. Seeing the trends, we feel SMBs will have to adopt a mobile strategy for their business and hence DIY App platforms would only grow from here and onwards.”

Indian SMBs are slow when it comes to tech adoption

SMB’s lack knowledge of building apps and are not sure of what to expect. They hesitate to invest in apps because it is a complex, time consuming and a costly process. DIY apps are more attractive for SMBs as the process of building an app is simple, effortless and affordable.

App stores are vulnerable to breaches

Today, everyone has come up with a mobile app and for anything and everything.  Research has clearly indicated that while some of the utility apps are great, they also do lot of backdoor activity which can fool even the best of security professionals.  Corporates face huge challenge in this case as every employee accesses corporate information and mails from mobile devices which are now the weak links in security

For security all the APIS are protected by SSL Layers and secured by OAuth protocols. We also have various other measures and tools used for securing both in house and third party tools.

Empower 10,000+ SMBs with native mobile apps by 2017

There has been an increase in mobile apps importance globally. With developments at Google with regards to better SEO Ranking for businesses with Mobile Apps, providing users with app streaming options without actually downloading the app, the acceptance for apps in the minds of businesses and consumers is bound to rise.

Aliasger Motiwalla, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Sales, believes that the future of DIY platform is bright. “There have been reports suggesting that around 85 per cent of mobile users prefer using apps than mobile sites. Seeing the trends, we feel SMBs will have to adopt a mobile strategy for their business and hence DIY App platforms would only grow from here and onwards.”

According to the recent report over 1.28 Lacs+ Business Apps were made live on App store in 2014 alone in the US. Apps are now growing at 200 per cent year on year. With the growing adoption towards mobility and the above stats, way forward looks extremely exciting for Plobal Apps.