Digitalization has taken South Asia by storm, and it’s been helped in no small measure by the COVID -19 pandemic. According to a report there were 47.61 million internet users in Bangladesh in January 2021, an increase of 7.7 million (+19%) between 2020 and 2021.
However, full digital and financial inclusion remains elusive. This is because of the “accessibility disconnect,” which is what happens when user habits outpace infrastructure growth.
Despite the technical revolution, we have a long walk ahead of us to achieve complete digital and financial inclusion. Hence SHAREit, an online and offline digital content and file-sharing platform, aims at breaking barriers to create an inclusive infrastructure.
The questions of accessibility and affordability
In its earliest days, SHAREit focused on building a cross platform file sharing app, which then evolved into an online and offline file sharing, content streaming, and gaming platform. Additionally, it’s “a powerful, open ecosystem with apps from many developers,” says Karam Malhotra, partner and global vice president of SHAREit Group. “SHAREit unlocks the ability for many types of phones to share many types of content without the need for an internet connection or mobile data consumption and is downloadable for free.” This was a key focus for the firm, with users’ data demands growing exponentially.
“Before, people were happy to play a 10MB game. Now, they’re not happy playing anything less than a 1GB game,” he says. “It went from Nokia’s Snake to Call of Duty. The amount of data users required grew by 100x.”
Malhotra adds that the quality of mobile internet connectivity remains poor in emerging countries, and people there also worry about the high cost of mobile data consumption. These challenges around downloading content from the internet have shut people out from participating fully in the digital economy. An alternative for sharing content and apps would make a difference.
Tapping into human proclivities
“SHAREit’s growth is built on the principle that sharing makes people feel good, which is facilitated by our high-quality user experience and word of mouth marketing,” Malhotra says.
This organic foundation strongly drove adoption. While SHAREit was launched as a simple file-sharing platform, the team realized it was becoming a trusted source of referrals in underserved communities, becoming one of the fastest growing apps globally. To date, nearly 2.4 billion users have installed SHAREit Group’s diversified suite of applications. “Near-distance peer-to-peer is the world’s leading offline-online social ecosystem,” Malhotra says. “SHAREit enables a digital economy we don’t even know about.” Peer-to-peer sharing helps in another way: word-of-mouth is the fastest way to build trust. In fact, a study by Google shows that most people discover new apps through friends and family.
Malhotra says shared conversation is key to facilitating this trust. “Every popular game has at least 30 imitators,” he points out. “How do you know which is the legitimate one that doesn’t have viruses, malware, or spyware? You ask your friend.” Peer-to-peer sharing also organically improves digital literacy as friends trust and teach each other about how apps work.
Serving the underserved
SHAREit contributes to improving Bangladesh’s digital infrastructure by making e-commerce and mobile financial service platforms serve underserved consumers. It helps brands in reaching a more significant number of customers effectively.
As COVID -19 hit, the use of online platforms has exponentially increased with a significant surge in online shopping and payments. Taking that into account, SHAREit has collaborated with e-commerce and fintech brands like Daraz, a leading e-commerce marketplace and Nagad, a disruptive mobile financial service run as an arm of Bangladesh Post Office, to understand and reach the potential customer base. In the same way, SHAREit also facilitates the growth of other app-based businesses through its ad platform by curating campaigns to help brands reach out to an incremental and almost untapped audience.
To do this, SHAREit emphasizes its localization efforts, analyzing the cultural background and language environment of a target market and adapting the app’s design, interaction, and functionality accordingly. It also invests in local teams and talents to meet clients’ demands as best it can.
Tapping into over 700 global advertisers and their existing user bases, SHAREit helps its clients with awareness campaigns, user acquisition, digital payment options, and seamless user monetization via extensive audience networks. Clients can then reinvest the revenue into further user acquisition – Malhotra refers to this virtuous cycle as the “flywheel” model.
