Superapp

October 12 2020

The other problem is that people are not downloading as many apps. In fact, the average person will download zero apps every month. What does that mean for all of us? How do we fix the problem? The answer is super apps.

The super app concept has been proven successful. Meituan, a popular food delivery service in China is one of the leaders. In 2013, Meituan started thinking about what other revenue streams it could create—they added a button on top where you could start booking hotel nights. Today, Meituan is responsible for booking nearly 50 percent of hotel stays in China. The previous big player, Ctrip, is down to 22 percent.

You can also find attractions, nightlife, movie tickets, bike-sharing, and much more on Meituan. The company took a high-frequency, low-margin business—food delivery—and tacked on more low-frequency, high-margin businesses at low (or zero) customer acquisition costs. Meituan is leveraging its distribution and understanding of its customers, thinking what other revenue streams can I create with that mindshare?

In the Spotlight - The Mind Share Game

PayPal is entering a new era as it completes its separation from longtime parent eBay. Since splitting off in 2015, it has made critical acquisitions and started lines of business that should continue to increase revenue. Given the PayPal ecosystem and the growth of the fintech industry generally, PayPal stock could trade at significantly higher levels five years from now.

After lowering the barrier to entry for e-commerce companies to start selling online, Shopify is expanding its business on the back of the network of more than 20,000 app developers and agency partners that help augment those businesses as they grow, offering tools for things like customer service and inventory management and strategic insight. Shopify opened the online floodgates for retail’s highly competitive direct-to-consumer era, and in the aftermath, created a new economy around its business that helps keep its merchants, and therefore its own business, afloat.

Meituan-Dianping is the super app of the year. The platform was born in 2013 from the union of the two companies as a channel for food delivery and today includes over 30 different services, mostly related to tourism and F&B. All these services communicate with each other. The synergy between the world of customer service and the digital world is increasingly strong thanks to the progressive digitalization of services. There are now several government offices that have co-opted the super apps to allow citizens to renew their driving licenses, pay bills, or even “queue up” in the hospital. All from the comfort of your smartphone.

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