The world’s first truly mobile and completely free call app, nanu, is seeing exponential growth in its monthly active users (MAUs) and daily active users (DAUs).
nanu, available on both iOS and Google Play, is the world’s first ultra-low bandwidth VoIP technology and an advert-sponsored free-call business model to provide high quality free calls. Since nanu uses 80% less bandwidth than its rivals, it works on any network, including 2G and congested networks, enabling it to offer high quality calls from areas where other apps do not work.
That has seen its popularity grow in emerging markets like India, where 3G connectivity is a big issue. India accounts for over half of nanu’s users with roughly around 1.6 million downloads.
The app’s MAUs across its production cohort have reached a level 56%, while its DAUs are at 19%.
The MAUs and DAUs are the key metrics that indicate how popular an app is with the users and how fast it is growing. The industry standard of measuring a successful growth pattern is the 30/10/10 metric. According to this, 30% of all people who have downloaded the app should be using it at least once a month – called MAUs. Of these MAUs, 10% should be using the app on a daily basis – called DAUs.
nanu’s numbers across these two key metrics are nearly double of the industry standard.
“While most technology start-ups share their download numbers, majority of them are reluctant to disclose the MAUs and DAUs. It is simply because for many of them the numbers are dismal. Luckily we don’t have that issue and are glad to share our numbers. Our data shows that not only are we succeeding with a large number of downloads, the usage of our app is on the rise as well,” says Martin Nygate, CEO of nanu.
“This is indicative of the birth of a unicorn,” he adds.
Establishing a devoted following of active app users is challenging in today’s highly aggressive mobile realm. According to some estimates, roughly 95% of over 50 million mobile apps downloaded daily are discarded within 30 days.
nanu’s figures are a big testament to its stickiness with the users.
https://youtu.be/Q4XKCSSkgYY
Developed by A Singapore-based start-up, Gentay Communications Pte. Ltd., nanu has also developed proprietary technology that allows it to overlay voice adverts over the ringtone when a user calls another phone using the app. This offers advertisers a unique opportunity for one-to-one targeted campaigns based on users’ demographics.
The adverts are supposedly non-intrusive as they end as soon as the receiver picks up the call. The click through rates of initial campaigns run on nanu have been 6 to 7 times higher than industry standards. The adverts reduce the cost of the calls and help nanu to provide users free calls, including those to non-nanu users on landlines and mobiles.
While we’re not not totally convinced that nanu is unicorn-esque, we’re definitely intrigued by what could be a “Skype-killer”.