Fresh off my post on Indic language support, just came across two interesting stores related to content in Indian regional languages:
1) In an interview with Televisionpoint, Rahul Roy Chowdary, product manager for Google India, says:
“Growth is accelerating in these two segments (news & entertainment) and has seen a faster growth compared to other segments. The main driver for this is the availability of content in local language. Its amazing how the vernacular news portals are developing.”
and
“Much more content in Indian languages should be available online. We are also seeing a quick rise in searches for local content.”
2) In a separate story, an interesting bit from the Sarva Bharatiya Bhasha Sammelan (although, take this with a grain of salt):
“Almost 34% surfers of the 4.9 crore internet users in India, prefer surfing in regional languages,” said writer Shailesh Bharatwasi from Delhi
and
Sanjay Bengani from Ahmedabad, predicted a phenomenal growth for e-magazines in regional language
Great timing, what say ?
Difficult to say which survey Shailesh was pointing to, the JuxtConsult survey had pegged the figure (internet users who prefer to access the net in Indian languages) at 70%, so we don’t exactly have accurate numbers here. But its not hard to see for any regular net-surfer that Indic content on the Internet has increased manifold, much of it owing to the massive increase in number of blogs in Indian languages. Also writing and reading in Hindi has become much easier, technological hurdles being crossed. Add to them the charisma of Hindi news websites and exclusive portals like NDTV Khabar or Josh18, I am sure it was convincing enough for these business houses to go for Hindi, there sure is a market to tap out there.