Alexa Soon to Get A Voice In Hindi
As Amazon seeks new ways to reach more than half a billion potential users in the country, Alexa, the virtual assistant developed by Amazon now speaks India’s most popular language. According to India’s latest census, Hindi is the mother tongue of roughly 530 million people.
Alexa’s Hindi version will be available on Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers, as well as some Alexa-enabled speakers manufactured by Bose. It will also feature “Hinglish,” a hybrid of Hindi and English widely spoken across the country. Developers started making Hindi voice apps just two months ago.
Reasons for this Decision
Reports say that it’s all part of a push to cash in on India’s internet boom. More than 600 million people use the internet in the country, and around 700 million have yet to come online for the first time. Languages of India are the next frontier for global tech companies.
Prem Natarajan, Alexa’s vice president said to CNN business, “India is somewhat unique in the degree to which multilingualism is expressed.” He also quoted that, “India is important to us, and I think it’s fair to expect us to continue working towards demonstrating that sort of importance and maximizing utility to the Indian user base”.
Currently Amazon is spending more than $5 billion to grow its Indian business. They are also laying the groundwork to reach those Indian-language users. They also released a Hindi version of its mobile app last year and is looking forward to expand their services in other Indian languages. Their biggest online rivalry, Flipkart also added Hindi to its shopping platform earlier this month. Although Mr. Natarajan said that the process of teaching it Hindi and improving its bilingual capabilities will make future additions easier.
Edited by: The World Women News team
