While browsing an Indian website the other day, a thought occurred to me – should Indian startups consider providing Indic language support ? Considering the fact that now people from tier II & tier III cities are getting online, should this aspect be taken seriously by Indian startups ?
In my quest for answers, I figured that majority of the early adopter crowd in India comes from the urban, educated, English familiar demographic. With that assumption, it should be fine for Indian startups to launch with English-only support.
Or, that’s at least what I think.
I’d like to know what’s your opinion about it ?
“Should Indian startups consider providing Indic language support on their site ? Will this have any impact on user adoption ? “
Pranav,
I think content specific sites should start providing Indic Support.
As you mentioned, more and more people from Tier II & III sites are using the web .
Would suggest you to put a link to your site using Google translate.
http://74.125.93.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=en&tl=hi&u=http://www.startupdunia.com/&usg=ALkJrhgPlsUwX0QMLZPS8jTH9z2tc1AsXA
English is enough.
Seeing as typing in Indic languages requires prior knowledge of english, and seeing as indic keyboards are far from becoming mainstream equipment, I’d say Indic language support is unnecessary at the moment.
There’s this huge song and dance about how Yandex and Naver and Baidu hold lion’s shares of readership in their respective countries because they support native languages. India, I feel is exempt because the English language has penetrated our country to such an extent supporting Indic languages offers no real advantage.
Lots of people benchmark Indian startups with Russian, Korean and Chinese startups. I feel the Indian internet scene identifies more with the American and European demographic than with the Far-eastern demographic. Comments Welcome.
@ravi,
thats a nice idea, I’ll put up the Indic support for my blog
@Nero
I dont quite agree with you 100%. I do feel that as Internet gets more pervasive and mainstream, content sites will need to adopt Indic language support.
English may be ok now, but sooner or later, as the numbers grow, you will need to consider the non English speaking demographic. The fact that Google decided to support Indic languages for Google search, Blogger and other services simply shows their belief in the significance of Indic support.
I agree with your thoughts. I think moving forward rediff’s and indiatimes may wanted to get into regional language channels. Yahoo!, Click, Web Dunia , MSN and Sify already have good regional language channels. I think aol.in is also following the path.
This clearly shows, there is a demand for indic support for content sites. But for sites like ecommerce and other services, I am not sure if we need indic support at all. But like Nero pointed out, we are different from china and japan and I often see this comparison from internet companies in India.
@ekerala
rediff does have a stake in quillpad..i think times of india lately started offering support for hindi:
http://hindi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/
Pranav,
IMO it is very important for your visitors to give an option. We are planning to add at least hindi as supported language in a week or so just the way Ravi described. It is the easiest way to provide hindi and other regional language support for your visitors.
Most of the people in India using the Internet in India read/write English. However, being native language hindi (or a regional language) might be easier for them to read. By providing this feature, you are giving those people a chance to be ‘loyal’ visitors to the site that cares for them.
It’d definitely be interesting to hear from actual startups / companies who have tried out such an effort and if so, what type of results did they see.
Gaurav, once you launch hindi support, let know of any interesting insights you might uncover.
We recently added language support in 11 different languages at http://www.FirstPhera.com. While, more than 70% of our users come from metros, we have seen great adoption among these users, choosing to author some of their stories or sentences in regional languages.
Guests, who visit these sites are using this even more. Some of the interchange between friends comes more naturally in regional languages, and this is where it helps.
For us, the goal was to try engage the users more with the site and help them add more character to their created wedding websites, and we are really happy with the results. As we try and focus more on tier 2 and 3 cities, it will perhaps drive wider usage as well.
vikas,
thats awesome..thanks for sharing this — are there any gotchas that you faced during the implementation ?
Pranav
I have been reading your blog for a few months & would like to thank you for such a wonderful blog!
About Indic language support, I think every startup targeting Indian audience should seriously consider two simple questions
1. What is the nature of content & functionality that their application is offering
2. Is this content & functionality better understood & expressed in user’s mother toungue rather than in English?
If the answer to the second question is yes, then the startup should definitely add indic language support to the site / application.
Its my experience that content & functionality which is close to a user’s heart is better expressed & used if the same is offered in his mother toungue.
E.g. sites offering content & functionality around literature, art forms, music, entertainment, health & family, marriage, dating & relationships etc will be much more acceptable to Indian audience (urban & rural alike) if they are in Indic languages.