With 830 installs it hit #12 on India's books chart: how a sock-puppet novel app hit 50K in four days

Novels: Read Fiction Stories is an English web-novel reading app on Google Play. It launched in Oct 16 and reached 50K installs in under three weeks, squeezing into the top 10 of India's "Books & Reference" free chart. It has nothing new on the product side: the same template, a dormant UK company shell, four days of concentrated paid acquisition, and monetization turned on only after the push. This piece covers how it appeared, who is behind it, what's worth noting, and why we don't recommend copying it.

Oct 29, #12 on India's Books chart

In Oct 29, the app had only 830 total installs worldwide, adding about a thousand a day, and was already #12 on India's Google Play "Books & Reference" free chart (third-party install estimates; chart 10-29).

The top 10 on this chart usually looks like this: Wikipedia, Kindle, a few Bibles, a few calendars. The only novel app is India's homegrown Pratilipi, at #6 (11-06). These are all established big apps with modest daily installs, so a new app adding a thousand a day can squeeze into the top 15, and adding tens of thousands a day can reach the top 10.

Over the next four days, that's exactly what it did:

On Nov 2 it peaked at #6 on this India chart, and its store page showed the badge "#10 top free books & reference" (India Google Play page, 11-06). Then the spending stopped, and daily installs fell from over ten thousand back to six or seven hundred. The remaining few hundred are most likely organic traffic from the chart and search (inferred).

What it is

Open the store page and the title is the search term itself: "Novels: Read Fiction Stories". The first paragraph of the description is a string of genre tags: romance, drama, fantasy, revenge, werewolf, mafia, followed by "from love triangles and forbidden love to enemies to lovers and billionaire romance." Werewolf, mafia, CEO romance, revenge: these are the genres that sell best for English web novels going global.

The features are standard for a web-novel reader: "Trending Now," "Weekly Picks" and "Editor's Picks" sections, a bookshelf, resume reading, chapter skipping, adjustable font size and brightness, three themes (day, parchment, night), page-turn modes and a focus mode. Monetization is listed as "Contains ads" and "Contains in-app purchases" at $3.99 to $17.99 per item. Following the usual pattern for these apps, that likely means buying coins to unlock chapters (inferred).

Two details stand out: in-app purchases only appear from Nov 6, so monetization was off during the push. The version number is stuck at 0.0.4.16.10.26, and the store page's update date is Oct 28, with no updates since the push.

Rating: 3.3 stars from 40 reviews (11-06). The top two reviews are one from Oct 31 in Bengali script that reads only "❤️❤️❤️," and one from Nov 1 saying "best app." Both land right in the push window.

Who's behind it: a dormant UK company and a Vietnamese phone number

The developer info on the store page lists the legal entity as AAHARUSH TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED, with an address in Altrincham near Manchester, UK. The contact phone number starts with +84 (Vietnam), and the support email is a random string of letters and digits at gmail.

Checking Companies House, the UK company registry: the company was incorporated in March 2022, with a single director, an Indian national living in the UK. Its filings for 2023, 2024 and 2025 are all dormant company accounts, meaning no trading. The name shown on the store, "AADHYA TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED," matches another UK company incorporated in 2013, so the two don't reconcile. The website aadhya-tech-limited.github.io is a GitHub Pages site showing 404, and the privacy policy is hosted on Google Sites.

This is a common playbook among Vietnamese global publishing teams: buy or rent an already verified company developer account and use it to launch sock-puppet apps (inferred, based on the Vietnamese phone number, the dormant company and the sibling apps below).

The same account also has a short-drama app, Drama TV: Short Drama, Reels, launched in Sep 7 and at 935K installs by Nov 6. Its curve also comes in pulses: it added about 240K in one day in Oct 4, and about 150K in Oct 8 (third-party estimates). In Meta's ad library, the page running ads for Drama TV is one called "Mobile Review Journal S07": 73 likes, categorized as "Health & Wellness Service," with about 360 install video ads running in Nov 5. The same page also ran ads for an AI photo-editing app. A fake name, few followers, and one page promoting several apps is the typical pattern of a paid-acquisition studio.

The novel app itself doesn't appear in the public ad libraries of Meta, Google or TikTok. It may have run through Google's app campaigns, or through a different page, but we haven't verified this. Still, a curve that climbs 50K in 4 days and drops as soon as spending stops is not what word of mouth produces.

It isn't the first, and it isn't the only one

On the same India chart, two nearly identical apps appeared weeks earlier:

The three apps have different company shells, but the template and rhythm are the same: launch, spend for four or five days, enter India's Books chart, then go quiet. We can't prove they're the same team, but it's the same playbook. Vietnamese sock-puppet short-drama apps have also come in large numbers over the past half year (TV Stories, AuraReel, VioletBinge and others, each from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of installs).

The real novel-reading players operate at a different scale:

These major players all have their own content sources. This app's store page doesn't say where its books come from, whether licensed or taken elsewhere, and there's no way to tell from outside.

Also worth mentioning is Amberia: Novels & Stories (launched 9-17, 41K installs, up about 39K in the last 7 days), which has its own domain and polished copy, and reached #3 in a similar category in Japan. It looks more like a legitimate small novel company, and it isn't the same thing as the three sock-puppet apps above.

What it actually proves

One thing can be confirmed: India's Google Play free chart for books has a low barrier. A thousand installs a day can reach the top 15, and tens of thousands a day can reach the top 10. India's paid acquisition is also among the cheapest in the world, so a single chart push likely costs a few thousand dollars (estimated, unverified).

What it doesn't prove is whether it makes money. After the push, daily installs fell to a few hundred. It has 40 reviews, and the content is hollow. Paid features were only switched on in Nov 6. Reading apps recover their costs through retention and repeat purchases, and from outside there's no way to tell whether a single push can pay back. Novel Fic and My Novel, from the same batch, also haven't recovered after their pushes, which doesn't prove they broke even either.

If it were you

One-line verdict: you can learn a fact about chart barriers, but it's not worth copying. This is a Vietnamese studio's production line. Whether any one sock puppet makes money depends on the combined books of the whole batch, not on the single product.

Who it suits: teams that already have a reading or utility app with decent retention and just need visibility, looking for a cheap cold-start method. Also people already running paid acquisition in India or the Middle East who know how to calculate payback periods.

Who it doesn't suit: indie developers who want to build a web-novel reading app. Without a content source (signed authors or licensed rights), you're the fourth copy of a template. Pratilipi, Dreame and GoodNovel have tens of millions of users and their own libraries. It also doesn't suit anyone unwilling to touch sock-puppet accounts: Google Play bans duplicate content and linked accounts in bulk.

How to do it (if you only take that one move):

1. Choose low-barrier "country × category" free charts. India and the UAE's Books categories are examples. First check how many new installs a day the top 20 on the chart is adding, to estimate how much volume you need to get in.
2. Spend for a few days on concentrated paid acquisition to reach the top 10 to 15, and use the exposure from the category chart and the "#N top free" badge. At the same time, track how much organic traffic remains each day after spending stops, and how many people are still using the app 7 days later.
3. During the push, hold off on monetization and don't show too many ads, to protect the rating. Turn monetization on only once the retention numbers hold up.

How to acquire users: this move is itself paid acquisition (Google app campaigns or Meta video install ads) plus category-chart exposure, with ASO that puts the search term directly in the title. There is no content channel and no word of mouth.

When does the window close: there's no window to speak of. This barrier has been there all along, and Vietnamese studios have been using it all along. If anything, the path narrows when Google Play tightens its rules on sock puppets and developer verification.

When you'd be wrong: if in a month or two its daily installs are holding or climbing rather than falling, reviews start mentioning specific books and actual readers talking about them, or it breaks into the Top Grossing chart for books in India or the Middle East, then it isn't just chart-gaming. There's content that keeps people coming back, and it's worth going back to look at where its books come from and how they're priced.