-
Demand for local language content in India is growing rapidly, with 90% of the country’s new internet users consuming content in vernacular languages.
- In comparison with other languages such as English, Hindi emerged as the most consumed language with strong growth. Such new users consume large amounts of web video and audio content.
Demand for local language content in India is growing rapidly, with 90% of the country’s new internet users consuming content in vernacular languages.
“From 2015-18, almost 40 million Internet users were introduced and nine out of ten those new users were Indian language users,” Nidhi Gupta, senior product manager at Google India, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
In comparison with other languages such as English, Hindi emerged as the most consumed language with strong growth. Such new users consume large amounts of web video and audio content.
Google recognized the increasing demand for Indian language content and incorporated greater support for Indian language across its products and services, added Gupta.
The search engine giant was positive about India’s prospect of consumption of vernacular content. It has released many of its services in support of Indic languages such as Check, Shopping, Discover, Bolo, Lens, and Assistance. In September, Hindi, the world’s second-most-used language on Google Assistant, experiencing 5X growth in a year.
In May, Google announced in its report that Internet usage and growth will be driven largely by non-metro cities that are rapidly catching up with the metro cities.
It will lead in three verticals primarily –speech, vernacular, and video–added by the study.
As the next half, a billion Internet users are expected to come from non-English speaking regions, a lot of language content platforms have emerged over the past few years.
Adoption of the Web among the vernacular population has also given a boost to content players such as ShareChat, NewsDog, Dailyhunt, and UC News among others, who have grown significantly and attracted advertisers.
A lot of Indian startups are today are, ‘Going Local’ today. Adding regional languages into their platforms and applications which is helping them expand their customer base. Unicorns such as Policybazar, InMobi, Byju’s, Zomato, etc. now support from two to twelve regional languages.
According to the latest Google report, the number of online users in India will rise to 650 million in one year.
Non-metro cities, which are fast catching up with metros, will drive internet usage and growth.
In three verticals, like speech, vernacular, and picture, it will lead primarily. Around two in every three searches come from cities beyond the top six meters and there has been ten-time growth in searches in local languages, outlined the study of Google’s’ Year in Search–India: Insights for Brands.’
The online video audience is poised to hit 500 million in a year, the report added. The growing influence of online video will also create opportunities for marketers and brands and return on investment (ROI).
It is projected that digital consumer spending will grow 2.5 fold to $100 billion by 2020. Digital Media will be driving the growth in e-commerce, travel and hotels, financial services. The base of online spenders should rise more than twice in a year to hit 180-200M.
This goes to show the importance of local and vernacular languages in a diverse and huge country in India and this is a brilliant move by Google to support and encourage local languages which will help the creators and audience of these languages to flourish.
