The Indian Government has allowed Private companies to host their apps on Mobile Seva Appstore (developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology).
Earlier, only the Public apps could host on Mobile Seva AppStore but to give private app developers more places to host their apps for free, the government has brought this initiative.
Last month, The Indian Government has reportedly meted with the top app developers in India and said the response came from them was awesome.
Private players on the other hand are appreciating this initiative because recently Google announced to charge 15% commission from the subscription-based apps hosted on Google Playstore.
At the time of writing this article, Mobile Seva AppStore is hosting 966 apps that was downloaded in total more than 8 crore times. All these 966 apps are Government owned but soon we will see apps from private companies like Paytm and more in the Mobile Seva Appstore.
Since, the AppStore is new in the market, for now, it lacks some feature like App Ratings, Feedback etc. However, the officials have told they are soon going to introduce these features in the app.
About commercialization of the AppStore, the government has said, for now we aren’t charging any fee to host apps on the Mobile Seva AppStore but we may do so in future depends on the Business Model we have. However, that is for sure, we will not allow any illegal apps like betting and gambling to have space on the Mobile Seva Appstore.