Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, today announced the launch of the ‘Airtel App Store - a one stop online shop for all local and international apps. This modern apps store is empowered by neXva, a global provider of white branded app stores. This will provide Airtel Lanka with a full app store eco system which includes a customized website, mobile website and Android app as well as a developer portal for the localization of the app store to make it relevant for the market in Sri Lanka.
Currently, this all new Airtel App Store contains over 10,000 apps and will cater to a variety of preferences such as book references, gaming tools, business & finance, social networks, music & audio video, travel & GPS TV lifestyle, wellness education & eLearning, themes and many more. While customers could download certain apps for a one time fee, they also have the choice of choosing a range of apps for free.
Speaking about the launch of this new service, the Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director of Airtel Lanka, Mr. Suren Goonewardene said, “We are very pleased to partner with neXva on this app store initiative. With neXva having a technology center in Sri Lanka, this can help local developers monetize their content. We realize that localization is key to the success of our app store in Sri Lanka. We want to bring locally relevant mobile applications to our customers and support Sri Lanka’s talented developers. We selected neXva to deploy the app store because of neXva’s robust technology platform and their internal team will able to customize and localize the offering of applications specifically for our customers in Sri Lanka.”
The store features ‘one-click’ billing that enables Airtel’s customers to purchase apps through their operator billing as well as neXva’s neXpayer™ technology that enables in-app purchases and subscription billing.
“Bringing neXva’s app store platform to Airtel Lanka is a great opportunity for neXva,” said Brian J. Friedman, founder and CEO of neXva. “Our technology team is based in Colombo and we’re delighted that Airtel selected us to bring our app store platform along with a highly curated selection of content to Airtels’ customers in Sri Lanka. Localized content combined with our direct billing connection with Airtel Lanka brings a unique opportunity for local and international developers and content providers to monetize their content through neXva’s neXpayer™ operator billing API that enables content purchases through the mobile wallet.”
The ‘Airtel App store’ is geared up to give Sri Lanka a unique an exclusive experience and will be available at http://apps.airtel.lk.