Bought 22k installs in four days: a UK data consultancy's AI-question-bank bank-exam app for Telugu test-takers

BeReady: Bank Exam Prep went from 539 to 22k installs on Google Play in just four days, while the same developer's police exam app, launched the same day, climbed to 22k over the same four days. The gap between them is 73 installs. Look at the two curves and it's clear this isn't word of mouth; it's an ad budget split between two apps. The app itself isn't hard to build. The interesting part is the playbook behind it: a team of about four uses AI to mass-produce question banks and ships them one app at a time, per combination of state × exam × language, putting small budgets behind each and seeing which ones pay back. Below: what it is, where the numbers come from, how the money adds up, who it's competing with, and whether this path is worth taking.

A new account posting nine times in one day

In Oct 25 2026, an Instagram account called @bereadyexam posted at least nine times on the same day: seven vertical short videos with real presenters and big text overlays, plus two static images. The lead post's caption was just "BeReady BANK Exams Preparation App." By Nov 6 it had 3 likes and no comments. That same week, @BeReadyExams on YouTube uploaded a "BeReady Bank Exam" Short that had 0 likes.

A brand-new account dumping a batch of videos nobody watches suggests the videos weren't made for followers in the first place. Google's app ad campaigns require video assets to be uploaded to YouTube first, and Meta ad creatives often get posted to the profile as well. The most plausible read (inference): these were ad creatives being prepared for paid campaigns.

Six days later, install counts started climbing.

What it is

A question-practice app for Indian bank exam candidates, available in English, Hindi and Telugu. It covers the IBPS and SBI Clerk and PO exams, the regional rural bank (RRB) exams, and the state cooperative bank exams in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (TGCAB, APCOB, DCCB), which national platforms tend not to handle carefully. You choose the exam and state first, and the app only shows content for that exam.

The store listing advertises a huge volume: 100 prelim mock tests and 100 main mock tests per exam, with section timers and negative marking; 2019 to 2026 years of "new questions in the style of this year's papers" (the listing itself says "not actual past papers"); 93 lessons and 9 summary books, plus chapter-by-chapter notes on 17 reference books that bank candidates commonly read. No sign-up, no ads, and it works offline after the first launch.

A small team producing this much content in a few weeks almost certainly used AI to generate it in bulk (inference). The version number is still 1.0.0 today, with no updates since Oct 16.

Who made it

The developer listed on Play is CONCHX LTD, with an address in Bracknell, Berkshire, England. ConchX was founded in 2015 and does Microsoft Power BI and Fabric data consulting. Its website says "UK leadership, India delivery," and public sources put headcount at about 4. The director on UK Companies House records is Ratnakar Rao Sudireddy, whose surname suggests a Telugu background. In 2026 a separate company, "ConchX Venture Studio Hub Private Limited," was registered in Telangana. Its name suggests a studio set up for this kind of app, but I couldn't establish how it relates to BeReady.

Its website, bereadyexam.com, already lists three apps: a bank exam app, a police exam app for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (in Telugu), and apps for the Class 10 board exams and POLYCET (the polytechnic entrance exam) in two states. The third hasn't launched yet. The pattern is clear: target the Telugu-speaking market first, then fill it in one exam at a time.

Where the volume comes from

Cumulative Google Play installs, the two apps side by side:

(Google Play install counts refresh in batches every few days, so a daily change of 0 doesn't mean nobody installed that day.)

One app is sold to bank candidates and the other to police candidates. The two audiences don't overlap, yet both gained about 21k over the same four days, ending up only 73 installs apart. The most reasonable explanation is a single budget spread across both apps' ads.

Three more details fit:

• The people who came in from the ads don't seem to want it. 22k installs produced only 40 ratings, averaging 3.9 stars (Google Play India, 11-06). That's fewer than two raters per thousand installs. The only review visible on the page was left in Nov 3 by a user called "monster Karan banna," and it consists of two emoji: 🐜👅.
• Installs went up, but rankings went down. During the stretch when installs rose from 6 thousand to 22k, the app slid in India's Education free chart from #85 to #132. In Nov 4 both apps dropped out of the top 200 together. Play's charts weigh not just how many people installed an app but whether they kept using it, and a steady fall in rank suggests most paid-for installs were never opened again after installation (inference).
• It stopped as soon as the push ran its course. After Nov 4, neither app charted again, which suggests paid acquisition was paused or cut around Nov 3 (inference).

The timing is deliberate. On the IBPS annual calendar, the bank prelims fall in late November and the mains in December (exact dates vary across exam-prep sites). Andhra Pradesh police announced their recruitment in October. Both apps launched ahead of the exam season.

Where the money comes from

The bank exam app uses a hard paywall: the home screen offers 20 questions a day for free, along with recruitment notices and news, and everything else requires a subscription. New users get a 3-day trial, then auto-renewal at ₹399 per month or ₹3,830 per year (about $4.8 / $46). The in-app purchase tiers listed on the store are $4.19–39.99.

The police exam app is priced very differently: a free 25-question mock test, with a result that shows "where you rank among BeReady candidates." Everything else is ₹99 a month, with no card required up front, and it received an update as recently as Oct 31. The same team charges ₹399 with automatic billing after a trial on one app, and ₹99 with a free first test on the other, which looks like a live test of two pricing models at once.

The math that would justify this spending probably looks like this: for Indian education apps, the ad cost per install is typically just a few to a dozen rupees (estimate), so 22k installs cost a few hundred to a thousand or two in dollars. If 0.5%–1% of people who try the app convert to an annual plan, it pays back (inference). But whether the numbers actually work isn't visible from the outside: ratings are sparse, there's no real review trail, and revenue isn't public.

Who it's competing with

Exam prep in India is one of the most crowded education markets in the world, and BeReady is a small newcomer in it:

The two things to take from this table: first, the "AI-generated question bank plus paid acquisition" approach isn't something BeReady invented. Crack Govt Exam and PrepShots came earlier and are dozens of times bigger, so BeReady is a follower. Second, Telugu candidates aren't short on content; what they lack is a reason to pay. Local newspaper exam columns and YouTube instructors are free, and free Telugu mock-test sites like Varadhi Prep go straight after the same niche BeReady is targeting.

Hardly anyone knows about it

No media coverage, nobody discussing it on X, three likes on its Instagram videos, and no public revenue. The playbook is rarely written up. But the category it sits in is anything but quiet. The real question isn't whether anyone has noticed it; it's whether this playbook can make money in India, and there's no evidence yet either way.

If it were you

In one line: don't copy it and build another bank exam app. What it can teach you is a method for running an app portfolio, and it hasn't yet proved the method makes money.

Who it suits: people who are 1–3 fluent in an Indian regional language (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali) and know which state exams exist and where candidates gather online; people who have run Google app campaigns or Meta ads and can work out what a trial or a paid conversion costs; and people who can use an LLM to generate questions in bulk and have someone to proofread every one.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone trying to go head-to-head on the national bank, SSC or railway exams. Testbook, Adda247, and a crowd of paid-acquisition AI question banks have already filled that space. Don't bother if you can't proofread questions locally: candidates are buying "correct questions in the right format," and one wrong question means a one-star review. It's also a poor fit for anyone expecting Western pricing, since here a month runs ₹99–399.

How to do it: one codebase, with question banks and courses generated by AI per state × exam × language, and one app per exam. Following the pattern of its police app, offer a free mock test first, show a rank after it, then charge ₹99–199 a month. Don't start with a 3-day trial that auto-bills ₹399. Have a human check every question, and start with state-level exams that national platforms don't handle carefully: cooperative banks, state police, state civil services, teacher eligibility tests, and polytechnic entrance exams.

How to get users: spend as soon as a recruitment notice drops. Put a few hundred dollars into each app first, then watch trial conversion and day-one retention for a week. Scale the winners and kill the losers. Make creatives with local-language presenters doing short explainer videos, not just app screenshots. BeReady's pile of ignored videos also shows that organic reach isn't the plan; the creatives are there to feed the ads. At the same time, post free mock-test links in the state's Telegram and WhatsApp prep groups.

When to get in: work backwards from the exam calendar, since there's no single deadline. Pick a state-level exam scheduled for the first half of 2027 that doesn't yet have a dedicated app, and get it live a month before the notice is published.

Signs you've misread it: ① if your small test budget brings in users where fewer than 10% are still active 7 days after install, or if fewer than 1% of users pay for the ₹99/month plan, the business doesn't pay back in India; ② if BeReady itself stops advertising after 1–2 months and its third app never launches, that suggests the people running it didn't work out the numbers either; ③ the other way round, if its third and fourth apps launch and keep getting paid promotion, and the rating counts start rising, that means it has found a combination that pays back, and your move is to go after the language markets it hasn't touched yet.