Managing App Size for Super Apps
Article Summary
Hendro Riyadi from Bukalapak reveals how his team slashed their super app size by 35% while shipping new features in parallel. In emerging markets where users have limited data plans and older devices, this wasn't just optimization—it was survival.
Super apps in Southeast Asia face a unique challenge: they need dozens of features to compete, but users in emerging markets can't afford the bloated downloads. Bukalapak's app had ballooned compared to Western counterparts, creating real barriers for their Indonesian user base with limited data and older phones.
Key Takeaways
- Triaged features into native, dynamic delivery, or web view based on impact
- WebP compression and modularization removed dead code and optimized resources
- Product roadmap split: 30% new features, 60% improvements, 10% tech debt
- Assembled technical PMs and architects early to drive both product and engineering solutions
Bukalapak reduced app size by 35% over two quarters by treating app size as its own product feature, complete with dedicated team and company-wide alignment.
About This Article
By June 2020, Bukalapak's iOS and Android apps had ballooned to 161 MB and 36 MB. That's much larger than Netflix (71/15 MB) and Twitter (116/18 MB). For users in emerging markets with older phones and limited data, installing the app was a real problem.
Hendro Riyadi's team created deployment principles that sorted features into three buckets: native code, dynamic delivery, or web view. The sorting was based on business impact. This way, less critical features didn't have to bloat the base app bundle, and the marketplace still worked fine.
Over two quarters, Bukalapak cut the app size by 35% while still shipping new features. The app also got faster to start, had fewer frozen frames, and crashed less often.
