You might have already tried to Google translate this word ‘Aatmanirbhar” to English to understand the meaning, so did the rest of the youth that fateful night. Many wondered what Aatmanirbhar represented and what it would stand for, according to PM Modi’s plans. During his COVID -19 messages, Modi wanted to push the focus on India’s booming youth and how they should support the country forward with unique, enigmatic ideas. He called for the youth to effect a subtle change that would be the call for a universe sized change for the youth who depended on foreign brands to elevate class and style, and this change was about being Aatmanirbhar or Self-dependent.
Following the ideology of Gandhi’s boycott of foreign products in mind, Modi wanted India’s citizens to value the principles that Gandhi left for us and realize its swift disappearance. India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had been estimated to fall to a negative rating according to Moody’s if it didn’t resume its economic growth immediately. Most of the products in India were imported from China. Modi in his speech had directed the transition of India from a developing country to a ‘developed’ country.
The call for the ban on Chinese goods was the genesis of the movement that should strengthen India’s economic value and beliefs and cause a shiver among the developed countries. Modi, in his speech, had directed the transition of India from a ‘developing’ country to a ‘developed’ country. He highlighted how this tiny transition would be such a huge factor for the import and export value and youth employment in the country. The ban ranged from physical material like clothes, toys, and much more to electronic media like apps, games, etc.
Understanding the Modus Operandi
To understand the Aatmanirbhar concept, one must look at India’s growth since Independence. Ever since India’s Independence, the import and export were at such blasphemous figures. You could say the government was just a newly formed operation, but the value of the Dollar to Rupee flew so high to a 1:30 ratio. This impacted the way we bought and sold goods. The failure of Negotiation and the over-dependence of products of foreign countries led to this. India wanted to follow the trends that the world progressed. After meeting with world politicians and observing the apparent shift of lifestyle that India had with the rest of the world. This called for modernization with the universal standards, for example, more import of foreign products (Clothes, foods, toys, setting up of industries in India and so on) and India didn’t have much to produce and start-ups weren’t even a thing, so, exports were a dismal failure.
Cut to today’s scenario, the level of India with the world is at an almost par. Rising infrastructure calls for better technology in terms of network and architecture. Modi plans to become Aatmanirbhar in all forms and the most recent addition to the line is to capture the app e-market sector. Currently, if you’re an android or an Apple user, you use the Play store (1) and the App Store (2) respectively to download your favorite apps and games. The Duopoly that hasn’t yet been understood by the market is what Modi wants to capture one day. With the rise of Jio and its subsidiaries, Modi depends on companies like Jio to push out the technological advancement in India. Why? The stark fact of how Jio overthrew network companies like Airtel with their plans and offers. Keeping it cheap and yet at critical interaction. It would be outrageous for a company like Jio if it were a start-up to rise forever without the funding that Mukesh Ambani provides today.
Getting to Aatmanirbhar in the e-market space
PM Modi put out a timeline that India will achieve Self-dependency by 2035. Even though the path to being ‘Aatmanirbhar’ would be trying to be over-confident of its rapid growth, it sure looks hopeful that the progress would eventually show. Google and Apple dominate the e-market space and trying to go against them would be like dodging a thousand bullets in a tiny room. Foremost, The undertaker of the initiative has to make sure of non-plagiarising the concepts and material of the existing setup since Indian apps have a track record of using common features from better sources. Setting up software, hardware, and hiring itself would cost Crores, and initializing the process would take another chunk of investment.
Building a developer portal will be the key element since an app store runs on the apps created by developers. A developer portal is a website that involves all the primary components like coding setups and managing apps and other features. The developer portal is the fundamental base of any developer who wants to upload their app on the marketplace. The developers can easily earn by users downloading their apps through a commission.
The marketplace secures the collection of these apps and showcases them to the community. It is the place where users can buy or download for free. Stats show that India has the highest number of Internet users in the world. This only acts as an advantage for the app market to flourish by promoting consumer essential apps and therefore create strong user engagement with the developers.
Setting up an SSL certificate, servers, and repositories, where data moves freely and smoothly with the success of CDN’s, is one problem that India fails to manage due to low range technology that Indian currently thrives on. Thus, we finally come to a point where we have to depend on International networks and tech organizations to provide extremely costly cloud functionality, and thus, we fail at the Aatmanirbhar principle. Hence, it requires better understanding and basic stable setups to ultimately grow and then expand the marketplace and servers.
In conclusion, marketing it against the play store and the app store would the biggest controversies and challenges in the e-market. Compelling a whole country to practice a principle and participate in success is a challenging task. India’s pathway to an Aatmanirbhar principle is the best thing that can have a hand at shaping the future. The idea of an Indian app store might not be a bad idea, but at the rate, India progresses with tech, it will take many years to finalize on something that would prove different against the e-market conglomerates.
