‘Mobile Seva Appstore’- India’s first indigenously developed App

• The Minister for Electronics and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha has said that; India has developed its first indigenously developed App Store called “Mobile Seva Appstore”.
• The app store hosts some 965 live apps of several domains and categories of public services.
• This Indian App Store will be available for free of cost in the initial phases.
• The minister further highlighted that, while the government is encouraging the private players to host apps, it is also showing its interest to develop and strengthen its own mobile app store.
• This reply was given by the minister on the question, whether absence of India’s own digital store and its dependence on external app stores of Google and Apple is creating problems for the India’s digital ecosystem or the ministry is considering having its own digital store for self-reliance.
• The minister also informed that, India is the largest user of mobile apps.
• Further, as per India App Market Statistics report 2021, around 5 percent of the apps on Android belongs to the Indian Apps developers.
• Mobile Seva is an innovative initiative which has been launched by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• It is implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).
• It seeks to enable all the central, state and local government departments and agencies to deliver their services using the channels of mobile like SMS, USSD, IVRS, Mobile Applications and AppStore.
• Mobile Seva AppStore is a mobile application hosting platform which is owned by the government of India.
• The App Store has been created to provide a hosting platform for the Indian mobile application developers.