Tata Group to launch ‘super app’ with a range of digital services, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, said
Indian multinational conglomerate holding company Tata Group is pushing into the country’s booming tech sector with a new “super spp” that will bring together its disparate consumer services for the first time.
The new platform “super spp” should be ready to available in India from December or January, is set to put Tata head-to-head with rivals including Amazon and conglomerate Reliance Industries in a highly competitive market.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, said: “It will be a super app, a lot of apps in apps and so on . . . We have a very big opportunity.”
According to the FT report, Tata’s plans come shortly after Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries raised $20bn from 13 foreign investors including Facebook and Google in its own tech push, with its mobile operator Jio expanding into everything from e-commerce to video conferencing. Tata, which also owns steel plants and carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, has so far lagged in its consumer-internet offerings.
The services that would eventually be available through Tata’s supper app, including food and grocery ordering, fashion and lifestyle, consumer electronics and consumer durables, insurance, and financial services, education, healthcare, and bill payments.
Chandrasekaran said, “How do we give a simple online experience connecting all of this, and at the same time a beautiful omnichannel experience? . . . That is the vision.” India is considered to be one of the world’s most promising tech markets, due to rising incomes among its 1.3bn population and the fast adoption of smartphones.
