Meet appbackr. The World’s First Wholesale Marketplace for Mobile Apps

appbackr helps iphone and ipad app developers sell wholesale copies of their applications to fund their development. appbackr buyers profit when the apps are sold on the iTunes store.

After he told me who he was (and wasn’t) and what he does, Jagat Bhuyan, the Director of Developer Marketing at appbackr - explained in detail what appbackr, the Company is all about, what business problem they are solving and what value appbackr provides to both mobile developers and informed intelligent buyers. He also spoke about app submission and verification process for the app developers. Finally, he gave a peek into his role at appbackr as well as the background of the four founders of appbackr.

What is AppBackr? Tell me a little bit about how you were founded and what business problem you’re solving.

Jagat: AppBackr is the first wholesale marketplace for iPhone and iPad applications. What we’re doing is, we’ve created a platform to bring together the developers with people that can back their apps — we’re calling buyers — and come together and innovate through collaborations.

The company was actually formed out of an idea from a company called Embarkons, which is one of the companies from our founders as well. He is a big backer of peer-to-peer financing. He’s out there creating conferences and stuff or talking about this new theory that — not only the peer to peer financing, but micro-financing type idea.

appbackr was basically a project that came out of that company.

What is the value in appbackr for developers and for the Buyers?

Jagat: Let’s talk about the value from both sides. The interesting thing with this platform we’ve created is there is definitely benefit on both sides.

Start with the developer. One of the issues that we see is that they have great ideas. Developers are the lifeblood of the app marketplace. They have great ideas. The problem is that they don’t always big pockets. Most of the time these guys have full time jobs. Most of these guys are using side projects and developing stuff on their own and using their own funding. It just becomes a very convoluted process for them.

On the other side, what you have is the buyer. For them — the buyer might have — they can classify as all types. They may have the money, but currently there’s no model to really get return from iTunes at this point.

Basically whether they put their money into a conceptual app or a finished app, you either get 27% return or 53% return. Either one of those numbers — less risk with the finished applications obviously, right? But either one of those numbers is a pretty good return on any marketplace you’re looking at.

I saw the video online and you said you verify the applications. How do you do that?

Jagat: Before we allow the applications to be put up on the marketplace, the developer has to be a registered developer through iTunes. Additionally at this point, we have what’s called a verification tag that the developer themselves have to — there is a fee to create that because we have to actually go through and do that verification.

It is something that — if they want to seriously use the marketplace to fund some apps, they have to have credibility. This is a way for them to gain credibility as random people take a look at their application. That tells the buyer, this guy has the ability to actually finish what he says.

On the other side, for the buyers, we don’t verify the buyers, but we allow the developer to verify themselves in a sense, right? We let them decide who should and who shouldn’t buy their applications, right? We let them decide, do they want to sell to their own internal network or do they want to just let it out in the open to anybody and everybody?

What is the security or guarantee for the developer? Say a buyer says he’s going to buy it. What if he backs off or something?

Jagat: Unfortunately for the buyer, there is no backing out because the second he makes that transaction, the developer gets the money immediately. It’s an instant transaction. That’s why we call it a cash advance. I want to buy 1,000 units of your application. It gets taken out of PayPal immediately.

When did you launch officially and how was the reaction from the developer and buyer communities?

Jagat: We did a private launch — very private launch on Tuesday (June 8th 2010). We’ve been getting tremendous feedback. Even back in April, when it first kind of came out for the PayPal conference, we ended up being one of the two winners out of 650 original companies.

I think, just in general, as far as what the feedback is — the concept, everybody sees and says, wow, that’s really cool, right? What they want is more information. They want to understand where the model is and it really — once you get to sit down and look at it, it’s really a wholesale model — most every kind of vertical has at this point.

Are you guys funded or looking for funding? What’s the status?

Jagat: We have closed a round of seed funding. We are obviously always looking for funding. We’re open to anybody that wants to talk about investing in the company.

Is this only for iPhone apps right now or any kind of apps?

Jagat: Excellent question. Here’s the thing. The reason this is really interesting is, we’re taking it and we’re applying it to the iPhone and iPad right now. There’s definitely benefits there. It’s highly visible. It’s highly popular. It’s Apple.

If we can prove that the model works, then not only do we look at Android and Symbian and Java or whatever else it may be, but then all of a sudden you look at e-books, you look at digital music, you look at all of these digital media value pieces and the model will work there.