In a MediaBrief exclusive, Arjun Ghose, Co-Founder and CEO; Sukhdeep B, COO and CPO; and Sam Noble, CTO of Veera Browser, speak about the launch and growth of the Indian web browser ‘Veera’. They outline the unique and innovative features that differentiate Veera from other web browsers and spotlight its localized content offerings. They also discuss Veera’s future plans for expansion and growth. Read on.
What was the rationale behind the launch of Veera?
Arjun: India is going through a massive growth spurt. This has happened multiple times historically and has been referred to by many names, including the leap economy (we tend to often skip cycles heading towards the next one), as we did with 4G over 3G, for example.
We see this happening again, and it has been ongoing for some time now. The transformation in digital payments, the increased consumption of digital content, the adoption of digital services, and the ubiquity of the mobile phone in daily life in India are all signals that point to the same.
For it to go to the next level, we need to better utilize every magic trick the internet has to offer us, not just the ones with well-packaged apps. And while “there is an app for that” might seem like a great idea, every phone cannot accommodate the hundreds of apps trying to make people’s lives easier.
So, we see a path to bring the best of them together as needed to better aid people’s daily interactions.
What are the unique and innovative features that differentiate Veera from other web browsers?
Sukhdeep: We looked at this from a customer-first perspective and identified that customers want a very simple set of features. So for every problem we saw, we worked out our feature set to solve exactly that issue.
They want it to be mobile-first since most consumption in our country is on the mobile phone. Our app is mobile-first in its design and currently is available for Android only, giving us absolute clarity in our design for smaller and vertical screens.
They want it to be fast across a multitude of devices instead of just on the really high-end ones. Our app is designed and tested to work consistently well across all Android devices, ensuring that people get the same lightning-fast experience across devices.
They want to consume content and not just see banner after banner of advertisements. We have one of the world’s best ad blockers built-in (requiring no extra work by the customer), giving them a seamless journey.
They want to ensure their web journey is their own and not being tracked by all and sundry. We block all trackers and crawlers, ensuring that people’s privacy is sacrosanct.
They want relevant, regional content to consume. Tie-ups with some of India’s biggest national and regional publishers have given us access to great content libraries, which we are serving up to our audiences.
They want to play more without having to download tons of games and block up space on their phones. We’ve relooked at what’s possible in gaming and introduced a gaming portal that has India’s top-played casual games.
The best part is that none of them need to be downloaded; they can be played directly from the Veera app itself by visiting the Veera Games section. So play to your heart’s content without worrying about the space they take away. And customers like getting something in return for the effort they make.
This is how we introduced our rewards program, which is a rare engagement-based program that helps drive increased consumption from our users.
Basically, a robust browser with some incredibly useful extensions.
What is your vision for Veera in redefining the digital landscape and how users interact with the internet in India?
Sam: We see a huge opportunity in making people’s internet experiences faster, safer, more intuitive, and definitely more friendly in an effort to ensure that people are using the internet better every single day.
As we sit at the cusp of changing technology, platforms, and the very foundation of the internet, this is a now-or-never moment for people to better harness the power of technologies like generative AI, get comfortable not just consuming but creating with incredible 5G technologies, and embrace the possibilities of immersive content and experience technologies which will be here sooner rather than later.
We define success as being able to propel the next half a billion people to adopt using the internet more effectively – whether it’s to make payments, shop online, consume content, create online, excel at work, or help run their households. There is just so much out there. Our goal is a long-term one, and we want to chip away at it one million users at a time.
How did your partnership with Rahul Pagidipati complement the launch of Veera?
Arjun: Rahul shares the vision that all of us in the founding team had – of providing the right internet tools to Indian audiences in a more intuitive and usable manner to make Indian users some of the most advanced internet users in the world.
We had worked together at McKinsey in the past and were really passionate about this mission. Meeting Rahul gave us a glimpse into how many people in the world share a similar mission. Sam, for example, had worked with Rahul at one of his other companies, and he graciously joined our mission early on.
Rahul gives us access to great mentors globally with whom we can bounce ideas off. The three of us focus on the day-to-day operations right here in India, as this is the market where we have built our careers.
Tell us about the localised content offered by Veera and how it caters to the diverse linguistic and cultural differences in India?
Sukhdeep: We are very focused on ensuring that we cater to Indian tastes in terms of content consumption. Our very first partnership in the space was with Times Internet which gave us a massive library of content in multiple genres, languages etc. Post which we’ve onboarded content partners like ABP, Sportskeeda, Eenadu etc who have been able to give us a rich depth of content in specific spaces.
Aside from our partnerships, we’ve also been working on tools that allow audiences to better consume some of the things they see online and we will be launching this shortly.
How do you ensure Veera provides a seamless browsing experience for its users?
Sam: There are 3 big aspects of a seamless journey. First, Lower crashes which is one of the technical aspects of building the browser. Our engineering focused on building this to work seamlessly on low-end, mid-end, and high-end smartphones. So ensuring an equal experience no matter what your device is definitely a huge improvement
Second, Our ad blocker ensures that people’s browsing experience isn’t overtaken by tons of third-party ads which end up dominating the page rather than the content. And lastly, a faster and cleaner experience
And this is backed up by us hitting 1mn users in a very short time frame (from 100k users in the first week of Feb to 1mn in mid-April). We’ve been extremely frugal with our marketing spending, focusing instead on drawing in users through word of mouth.
What were the challenges or obstacles and biggest learnings from the journey of founding Veera?
Sam: Building a browser constantly reminds you why so few companies do it. It’s an extremely complex piece of software to build. Our app for example is roughly 40 million lines of code and there are so many moving parts constantly.
And the number of specialists in the space is low and every single person no matter what their level of comfort ends up having some learning curve because of the challenges in building for this market and since we have to do things differently from before.
Arjun: And establishing the category itself is a massive task since the biggest player in the space has subsumed search and browser into one large space making it easier for them to own it.
What are Veera’s future plans for expansion and growth?
Arjun: Our customers have come to us because we have done things differently and we will continue to lead the charge there. We want to continue to disrupt, whether it’s through product innovations, our technology, and our marketing. And we intend to grow this as organically as we can – with a focus on deeply engaged consumers who use us every week and every day.
