Super-app

We think these applications are so compelling that we just don't call them apps. We call them super apps. Super apps are integrated with other apps, giving you a seamless experience across the device.

However, despite increased interest from tech players, it is the financial sector that strongly gravitates towards the super app approach. In particular, the newly-emerged digital banks and FinTech players are at full speed ahead into transforming their ecosystem of services into open banking marketplaces.

LINE and the regional convergences of super apps in East Asia are a potent reminder of the need to analyze platforms outside of the bi-polar hegemony of the United States versus Chinese tech world—which increasingly frames journalistic discourse and academic research—and of the need to attend to the historical and regional particularities of platforms and their cultural impacts.

The Tata super app, due to be launched on April 7, will bring about a potential 10-fold increase in the number of customers for Westside, which is the group's retail store chain, Tata Trusts director Noel Tata has said.

He could well be eyeing something along the lines of the hugely successful Chinese app WeChat. That's a kind of "super app" which incorporates a lot of different services including messaging, social media, payments and food orders—there is as yet no such thing in the west.