Meet Indus OS.
From their website:
India’s #2, Indus OS is addressing one of the developing world’s biggest challenges – to develop technology to cater to the economic, social and regional diversity. In our mission, we are using the smartphone as the medium to connect the digital world with the masses. We are the first to deeply customize a smartphone experience that meets the real needs of the emerging market’s regional language speaking citizens through innovation, simplification and localization. The Indus OS currently supports 12 major languages and is intended to digitally connect the next 1 billion people in the emerging markets. Indus OS recently raised $5 million Series A funding led by Omidyar Network.
It's second most used mobile operating system in India, after Android. The Mumbai-based startup saw its market share cross Apple’s iOS last year continues to rise. It was recently nominated for the award of “Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets.”
by the GSM Association. It’s available in 12 regional Indian languages, apart from English, which is great strategy since India's is the world's fastest growing smartphone market. Indian has multiple languages and a large number of sub-dialects, so something like this has HUGE potential.
It's based on Android, adapted for lower data consumption, and has it own App Store called App Bazaar.
It's the first player that I've seen that may eventually be able to challenge Google's hegemony by taking this hyperlocal approach, chasing after and owning a hundred niche markets. Will be very very interesting to see where they go from here.