Apps that run without data? Uber, others eyeing India's feature phone users

From Google, Facebook and Microsoft to Amazon, Flipkart and Uber, all working on lighter apps to provide services in India's large untapped market comprising feature phone users

Eyeing the untapped but lucrative market beyond the 150-million-odd smartphones users in India, technology majors, e-commerce companies and app-based aggregators are all working to come up with ways of offering services in areas with low or no internet connectivity.

Technology giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, e-tailers like Amazon India and Flipkart, as well as cab-hailing services like Uber have understood the need to devise means to reach the users of feature phones, which, according to industry analysts, account to 50 per cent of mobile phone sales across the country.

While Google, Facebook and LinkedIn have brought lighter versions of their respective