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Tech & Innovation·April 23, 2026·1 min read

Sensor Tower: India's mobile app IAP revenue crossed $300M in Q1, up 33% YoY, with non-gaming apps generating $200M+, much of it captured by global platforms (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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India’s IAP market crossing $300M in a quarter — with $200M+ from non-gaming — says the real upside is SaaS-like consumer services, not just games, and global platforms are capturing most of it. If you’re building for India, assume platform taxes and discovery moats only get worse from here — distribution strategy matters more than feature set.

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'It ultimately made people realize that music was worth paying for': Spotify's Sten Garmark on how the streaming giant created an entirely new business model, and its mission to convince users that 'there was something better than free'

Spotify spent 20 years teaching consumers to pay for what they thought should be free — that's the playbook AI-native products will need as open models and free assistants flood the market. If your AI product is just 'better than free,' assume ARPU compression unless you reframe the category the way streaming did for music.

Tech & Innovation

How Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 killing fed into a narrative pushed by tech leaders like Elon Musk about SF's decline until an acquaintance was convicted (Shawn Wen/Bloomberg)

One high-profile tragedy was enough to reshape how founders and investors talked about an entire city — and it turned out the narrative was wrong. If your location or policy bets are driven by vibes and Twitter takes instead of hard operating data, you're building on political weather, not climate.