Hidden weak links in India’s most-downloaded mobile apps

India’s First Mobile Security Benchmark for High-Scale Apps

What 1.5B+ downloads reveal about the true state of mobile security in India

Mobile apps now carry the weight of banking, payments, healthcare, identity, retail, and daily transactions for hundreds of millions of users. Yet our assessment shows a clear pattern: the controls that should be standard in 2025 are still missing at scale.

This whitepaper lays out the evidence.

Why this report matters right now

India’s regulatory stance is strengthening. DPDP is now aligned with global privacy expectations, and new AI governance norms place India alongside more than 60 countries shaping responsible AI use. At the same time, attackers are shifting toward automated exploitation of device-side weaknesses, and high-MAU apps amplify every flaw instantly.

Organisations can no longer rely on assumptions or occasional audits. They need clear visibility into how their mobile apps behave on real devices, under real conditions, at real scale.

This benchmark delivers exactly that.

Inside the whitepaper

A breakdown of India’s highest-risk sectors

Where weaknesses concentrate across banking, fintech, retail, healthcare, telecom, and delivery — and why these categories now face population-scale exposure.

The patterns behind nearly every critical failure

Hardcoded secrets. Weak TLS. Missing runtime checks. Inconsistent storage. Controls that should be table stakes but remain absent in apps used by millions.

The first India-specific benchmark mapped to DPDP expectations

How mobile posture compares against global standards and what enterprises must change to meet rising compliance pressure.

Realistic abuse paths attackers can already exploit

How cloned apps, instrumented runtimes, and spoofed sessions create credible routes to financial fraud, identity misuse, and data exposure.

A clear blueprint for rebuilding trust at scale

Practical steps for engineering, governance, and security teams to stabilise posture without slowing delivery.

Key takeaways

• A realistic view of where India’s top apps stand right now
• A sector-wise map of the most common and most dangerous failures
• A framework to align engineering, governance, and compliance
• A roadmap for continuous posture tracking
• A competitive advantage as mobile trust becomes a market differentiator