I’m very curious about this question - but, like many of the things I’ll be posting here, I do not have the current bandwidth to go down the entire rabbithole to find the answer.
Instead, what I have are some reasons behind why this is a valuable question to get an answer to:
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This represents the aspirational benchmark for any consumer product in that region. It’s good to know what ‘excellence’ counts as here.
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In many markets, buying distribution can be a great way to up-sell. The classic examples of this come from Sturgeon Capital’s portfolio: (a) Kaspi has 80%+ penetration in Kazakhstan and has layered on new products at a shocking pace, resulting in market dominance across 4+ core digital services. (b) Zoodpay has a similar story. Distribution is a wedge for many things…
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I think this links well with my ‘YouGov for Frontier Markets’ prompt.
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I suspect the most distributed apps are Facebook/Whatsapp; Android Phones, and Telecoms/Utilities Infrastructure. This is probably consensus. I’m curious about what surprising mid-cap, highly distributed, multiple-use apps there are. For example, I hear good things about Talabat which is Iraq’s premier food delivery app. Funny that they’re winning the market (it seems), whilst Baly raised 10.5m from international investors but is finding less traction.
Anyways, once we set up a research team, this is one of the first quests one of our analysts will go on. Until then, if you, dear reader, want to chime, feel free to do so.