India emerging as a hub for app innovation: Apple

NEW DELHI: Blind users often struggle with navigating unfamiliar indoor spaces, reading signs or understanding visual cues that most people take for granted. That problem is what pushed 20-year-old Nimar Sharma, a student at Chitkara University on the outskirts of Chandigarh, to build Blind Bridge, an accessibility-focused app that aims to make everyday navigation easier for visually impaired users. His app uses intuitive vibration-based sensing and earned Sharma a place among the distinguished winners of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge 2026 — one of seven winners from India selected this year.

But Sharma’s story is no longer an isolated example. Across India, a growing wave of student developers is building apps that combine artificial intelligence, accessibility and everyday problem-solving — something Apple increasingly sees as central to the country’s role in the global app economy.

Speaking ahead of WWDC 2026, Susan Prescott, VP, worldwide developer relations at Apple, said India has emerged as one of the company’s most vibrant developer markets, driven by a mix of global ambition, entrepreneurship and student participation.

“It’s been really exciting to see a big developer community in India now that is still growing rapidly,” Prescott said in an interaction with journalists. “What’s interesting is the global nature of what developers are doing in India. Many developers want to create impact locally, but also take advantage of the global reach of the App Store.”

That global reach is becoming increasingly important for Indian developers. According to an Apple-backed study released in April, the App Store ecosystem in India facilitated Rs 44,447 crore in billings and sales in 2024, while the global earnings of India-based developers have tripled over the last five years. Close to 80 per cent of earnings generated by Indian developers now come from users outside the country.

Apple says the App Store ecosystem now spans 175 storefronts globally, allowing Indian developers to scale internationally far faster than before. In 2024 alone, apps developed in India were downloaded more than 755 million times worldwide through the App Store.

A key part of Apple’s India push has been its growing network of developer initiatives and university-linked iOS development centres. At Chitkara University’s iOS Development Center, powered by Apple and Infosys, students are already building apps across categories ranging from accessibility and healthcare to travel and content creation.

Among them is Clario, an AI-powered communication practice app led by third-year computer science engineering student Simran Preet Kaur. The app is designed to help users improve speaking confidence through structured verbal exercises and spontaneous speaking challenges.

Another student-led app, Resonance, developed by Namir, focuses on audiobook creation and discovery. The platform uses AI-assisted tools to help creators generate, publish and manage audiobooks while also giving listeners a single platform for audiobook discovery and immersive listening.

TripSync, built by third-year student Anushka Sharma, is aimed at group travel planning. Designed natively for iPhone, the app helps groups coordinate itineraries, manage trips together and organise everything from weekend getaways to multi-city vacations in one place. “It was a good experience building the app on Apple’s tools and the whole learning process was quite smooth,” says Anushka.

Healthcare has also emerged as a strong area of focus. SeizCare, developed by Anmolpreet Singh, is a seizure alert and tracking app for people living with epilepsy. The app includes emergency alert features that allow users to quickly notify trusted contacts during critical situations while also maintaining a record of seizure history.

For Sharma, Apple’s ecosystem played a direct role in shaping Blind Bridge. He credited developer workshops and sessions at the university’s iOS centre for helping him understand Swift and newer Apple frameworks.

“The support I got was immense,” Sharma said. “They introduced me to technologies that I was exploring for the first time.”

The emphasis on accessibility is visible beyond Chandigarh as well. Gayatri Goundadkar, a 20-year-old student from Maharashtra Institute of Technology World Peace University in Pune, built an app playground called Steady Hands after watching her grandmother gradually lose the ability to paint due to hand tremors.

The app uses Apple Pencil stabilisation to help individuals with tremors create digital art more comfortably. Inspired partly by Apple accessibility features such as Touch Accommodations, Goundadkar used SwiftUI concepts and AI tools including Anthropic’s Claude to better understand how PencilKit handles stroke data. She also developed a system that analyses raw motion data from iPad and Apple Pencil to identify the frequency and intensity of a user’s tremors.

“My main audience is older adults,” Goundadkar said. “Especially in India, technology can feel intimidating for that generation, so I made every decision with that in mind. I didn’t want anyone to open the app and feel lost or overwhelmed.”

Prescott believes this sense of purpose is increasingly defining the work coming out of India’s developer community. According to her, the strongest apps are not necessarily the most technically complex, but the ones focused on solving real-world problems.



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