PhonePe-Owned Indus Appstore Cofounder Akash Dongre Steps Down

PhonePe-owned mobile app marketplace Indus Appstore’s cofounder and CPO Akash Dongre has stepped down from his role. 

“After more than a decade of building, I’m taking time to pause, recharge and reflect. I don’t know exactly what comes next,” Dongre said in a post on LinkedIn. Without divulging the succession plans precisely, Dongre said that Indus’ Appstore will continue “under new leadership”.

Sources told Inc42 that Priya Narasimhan, who has been serving as Indus’ Chief Business Officer since Jan 2024, will lead Indus moving forward. 

Dongre started the venture as Indus OS in 2013 alongside Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi. His exit comes nearly four years after it was acquired by the Walmart-owned fintech giant.

It is pertinent to mention that both Deshmukh and Bangarambandi previously exited the business.  

Former CEO Deshmukh exited the business in 2024 and has since launched a new startup, Natoe.ai, which aims to use AI to disrupt radiology. Meanwhile, CTO Bangarambandi has been on a career break since June 2025 as per his LinkedIn profile. 

Indus made its name by building a smartphone operating system focused on regional language and had partnered with several major mobile brands, including Samsung, Micromax and Karbonn. It was the second-largest mobile OS by shipments in India by 2016, Dongre claimed. 

In 2019, the company pivoted towards developing a made-in-India third-party app store model, offering zero listing fees for developers at a time when rivals Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store were under fire for charging high commissions. 

Following the strategic shift, it was acquired by PhonePe for $90 Mn in 2022 after a long legal battle. 

PhonePe launched the marketplace rebranded as Indus Appstore in 2024, and later struck a partnership with Xiaomi India to pre-load the Indus App Store on all new Xiaomi smartphones. This enabled the platform to cross the 1.5 Cr Mn user milestone, according to Dongre’s LinkedIn post. 

For PhonePe, this is the second major top deck executive exit within its acquired businesses this year.

Earlier in May, Share.Market CEO Ujjwal Jain announced his departure from the company. Jain founded wealth management startup WealthDesk in 2016 and retail-focused advisory OpenQ (Quantech Capital), along with Sujit Modi, in 2018. The ventures were acquired by PhonePe in 2022 and later rejigged to Share.Market.

These exits come at a time when PhonePe is on the road to the bourses. After pre-filing for an IPO in 2025, PhonePe filed its updated draft red herring prospectus with the SEBI for an OFS-only IPO in January.

As per the prospectus, PhonePe’s parent Walmart, investors Tiger Global and Microsoft, among others had proposed offloading over 5 Cr equity shares via the IPO.

However, since PhonePe filed the UDRHP, the Indian equities market has landed in a soup of sorts at the behest of the ongoing conflict in West Asia. The conflict, which has had a trickle-down impact on gas prices and business viability of the region, has also caused volatility in the Indian equities market. 

The market volatility caused PhonePe to temporarily halt its IPO. In March, the company announced its decisions and shared its intent to restart the IPO process once global capital markets regain stability.

Sources close to the development told Inc42 that PhonePe is likely to push the IPO till at least June.

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