Why Inclusive Technologies And Regional Languages Will Be The Key Focus For Indian Startups To Cater To The New Billion Users?

Did you know that India is the 4th largest country in terms of tech innovation? Well, this is a fact as given by the NASSCOM 2015 report. India comes immediately after Israel, UK, and US with around 3100 startups coming up each year. Statistics also reveal that startup ecosystem in India saw a 40 percent growth in a number of incubators and startups in the year 2016 – 2017. The startup ecosystem in the country is booming mainly due to the presence of a young, dynamic and inspired pool of entrepreneurs. Smartphones have redefined lives and presented things that seemed impossible a few decades back. With technology developing each day, entrepreneurs are getting new opportunities to drive a change. India is fast emerging as the start-up nation of the world. Entrepreneurs are establishing companies that offer flexibility, convenience and innovative solutions to customers. The recent and past trends show that Indian startups are now focusing on inclusive technology and regional languages as a segment to grow. India is the Land of Diversity Over past years, the focus of entrepreneurs is shifting towards regional languages. India is the land of diversity with innumerable languages, cultures, and religions. To be successful in India as a nation, every entrepreneur needs to win over this diversity of India. They need to understand the differences and reach to the people on the ground level. Start-ups are looking to get connected to villages and many of them have already acquired a strong user base. This is the situation where the importance of regional languages comes into the picture. Defining Inclusive Technology Along with regional languages, another section of society has immensely benefited from technology – people with special needs. Several startups are successfully working towards assistive technology. These companies are providing hardware or software or both that helps people with special needs to live, learn and communicate. These entrepreneurs have brought about a drastic change in the lives of people with physical disability, learning difficulty, sensory impairment and any other kind of special needs. They are helping people with special needs enable equal access to opportunities presented by life. Understanding Regional Markets Connectivity to Internet and penetration of smartphones has drastically improved in the rural areas of India. Even people at the base of consumer pyramid have a strong awareness of smartphones, apps and their benefits. Adopting vernacular languages is a good way to reach out to the masses in India. It has given startups more than a billion new users to target and converts. But, accessing, reaching and converting customers in the regional markets are quite different. There is a difference in the pattern of the local market and regional markets. Start-ups need to understand this pattern, conduct surveys and analyze the user behavior before targeting a particular regional market. Any start-up trying to use the norms and methods of local markets for regional markets are making a fatal mistake. Startups starting bottom-up, from a micro to national macro level are the ones capturing the market. Even tried and tested methods of international markets are bound to fail if you imitate them to regional markets. This is true for traditional as well as digital marketing. Startups need to understand that every regional market has its own customer base, trusted brands, decades of trust and a method of selling. A business needs to understand these basics if it wants to set a base in the regional market. Relay on Local Languages India is striving to become a $1 trillion digital economy. An executive with Google India stated that building more digital content in regional languages will boost this bid being made by India. Statistics reveal that there are approximately 400 million users of the Internet in India. Out of this staggering high number, around 234 million Internet users are using it in the local language. By the end of 2021, the number local language users are expected to cross 536 million. It has become really important that content in local languages is focused upon. Start-ups need to develop technology and products that are optimized for local language and ensures that Internet becomes inclusive. More than 250 million people from smaller cities and towns are expected to come online in the next three to four years and use apps to create content and converse in local, vernacular languages. Start-ups focusing on regional languages are also getting funding from different sources. Resources state that an online storytelling platform in regional languages, Kahaniya.com raised around $200,000 in seed funding from undisclosed sources. Based in Hyderabad, this platform allows users to publish and monetize content in regional languages. They provide users the option to charge per chapter, series, book or more. They aim to fill the gap between the availability of content in regional languages. The platform offers writing support in more than 10 languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Odiya, Gujarati and more. Another start-up working in regional languages is BetterButter. It boasts of having the largest user-created data in India. This website offers more than 50,000 recipes in multiple languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Marathi. The service for Hindi was launched in 2017 and has seen more than 200,000 hits. They are in the process of adding Gujarati, Telugu, and Bengali in the coming months. Even Google has been quite upbeat of India’s growth as a digital economy. The standalone digital payment app, Tez, launched by Google was built for India. It is not only available in English but also in regional languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi and Telugu. Statistics reveal that demand platforms offering regional content have increased multifold in past years. From hooking users to consume online content in their regional languages to making use of penetration of Internet, startups dealing in regional languages have seen a spike in popularity. They have enabled a large ecosystem of companies, manufacturers and mobile app makers who are now targeting non-English speaking customers. The intent behind enabling regional language interaction is to increase engagement with customers. For startups, the focus is on the customer and in India, and this ecosystem has witnessed a large shift toward regional languages. The app industry for local language apps is expected to mature in the next five to ten years. Startups need to keep innovating and understanding changing regional dynamics to stay a winner in this race!