What you need: A unique idea. Little or no investment. A few hours. What you get: A global market of over 250 million smartphone and tablet users. A time share in 33,675 downloads a minute, or 17.7 billion a year.
The trade off has never been so one-sided, in favour of entrepreneurs. Start with minimal investment (no cost is also possible) and access a market with no physical boundaries. What do you make? Mobile applications — bite-sized programs that make millionaires of entrepreneurs holed up in nondescript places, even tiny Udupi in Karnataka. Rohith Bhat, the 39-year-old Udupi based app maker who boasts clients like Apple and addicts of his products like Prison Mayhem HD and WordsWorth in far-flung Europe, is one of India's little-known cache of star mobile app millionaires.
They have the agility to keep up with the fast-moving technology and produce apps based on new ideas with user-friendly presentation choc-a-bloc with features. As app-making is an idea intensive, not capital-intensive business, small outfits can make it big — a perfect fit for creative, tech-savvy but resource constrained Indians.
The opportunity is huge in both volume and value. A 2011 report by Gartner predicts annual worldwide mobile app downloads will reach 185 billion by 2014. Juniper Research says these clicks are likely to add up to over $25 billion in revenue.
"The potential has never been higher. At the same time, the entry barriers have never been lower," says Kenny Mathers, Nokia's head of developer relations for Asia Pacific. He is not referring to the investment but the technology required to build an app. All major platforms, Google's Android, Apple's iOS and Nokia's Ovi, offer comprehensive software development kits (SDKs) online. Now, you may know nothing about coding and still put your app out there.
So if not in-depth programming, what does it take to make it to be in Bhat's league? And is the road to their millionaire club as simple as it seems? To find out, ET on Sunday spoke to the Indian app-preneurs with global hits in their kitty . They share some everyday challenges: lack of adequate talent. Some unique ones: making money from freeware. But collectively, they can't stop gushing about the hottest new business. And explaining why the next Angry Birds may come from their research labs.
Where idea is king
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