Aarogya Setu becomes fastest growing mobile app with 50 million users in 13 days

The application, which is available on both Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, uses location data to point out people that have come in close proximity with anyone who has tested positive for coronavirus COVID-19.

It is to be noted that 11 million users downloaded the app on Tuesday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to download the application during his third televised address to the nation.

The downloads surged from 39 million to a peak of 100,000 per minute on Tuesday morning following PM Modi’s address to the nation at 10 AM.

The announcement by prime minister led to a spike that peaked at 100,000 registrations per minute in the afternoon, which stabilised at 1,500-2,000 downloads per minute over the rest of the day,’

With 99% downloads on Android, Aarogya Setu overtook Nintendo’s popular augmented reality game ‘Pokémon GO’s’ record of 50 million downloads on Google Play in 19 days in 2016.

Aarogya Setu requests for access to location at all times and also seeks Bluetooth access after download. Once these permissions are granted by the user, the app requests for some basic information which helps it in building data about the users. The information includes age, gender, name, health status and also asks for the countries that the user has been to in the past few weeks.