Amazon seeks to tap next 500 mn users in India, expands vernacular offering

Marathi and Bengali added to five Indian languages; Amazon to also launch voice shopping experience in Hindi

At a time when only 10 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people know English and e-commerce services have mainly been offered in that language, Amazon is betting big to reach customers in their local languages and through voice-based shopping. The aim is towards building a platform that is inclusive and accessible for the next 500 million users which mainly reside in Bharat as well as Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and towns.

Kishore Thota, director, customer experience and marketing, Amazon India said for a diverse country like India, the 500 million customers when they come online, have unique needs and face unique challenges. These include language barriers, they prefer voice to text and are hesitant to make digital payments. They prefer the touch and feel experience before they make a purchase.

“To break the barriers of online shopping for customers, in recent years, Amazon has introduced newer customer experiences across interactive avenues like videos, voice and regional language,” said Thota.

Ahead of the festive season, Amazon India said that customers can now access the online marketplace in Marathi and Bengali in addition to English and five previously available local languages: Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.  In the coming weeks, Amazon will expand its regional language offering further with the launch of the voice shopping experience in Hindi. These launches break the language barrier and make e-commerce more accessible and convenient for millions of customers across India.

“Our aim with regional language shopping experience is to make e-commerce accessible, relevant and convenient for customers,” said Thota. “Every month, tens of millions of customers visit Amazon, in regional languages and 90 per cent of the customers are from tier 2 and below cities. This festive season we are happy to expand the experience for our customers in Marathi and Bengali.”

Since the launch of voice shopping in 2020, Amazon has seen the adoption of voice by its customers to fulfil their shopping needs grown by 2X year-on-year. Thota said the firm will continue to focus on bringing new features for our customers on voice to make their shopping experience exciting and fulfilling.

For the launch of Amazon platform in Marathi and Bengali, the company worked with expert linguists to develop an accurate and comprehensible user experience in each of the languages.  The team has chosen commonly used terms over perfectly translated words to make the shopping experience authentic, easy to understand and delightful for customers. Amazon customers can select their preferred language in a few simple steps across Android and iOS apps, mobile and desktop sites.  

Once selected, the language preference will be recorded and remembered for future visits. Customers can discover deals and discounts, place and pay for their orders. They can read detailed product information, manage their account information, track their orders and view order history in the language of their preference during the festive season.

The upcoming launch of the voice shopping experience in Hindi follows the launch of Voice shopping in English in 2020. With this launch, customers will simply be able to use their voice in Hindi to search for products or check their order status. For example, customers can tap the mic icon and say “joote dikhao” to search for shoes or “mera samaan kahan hain” to track orders. To access the voice shopping experience in Hindi, customers will need to update their Amazon app via Play Store. Post update, customers can open the app, set their preferred app language to Hindi and click on the mic icon displayed beside the search bar. The voice offering will be available only for Android devices. With this launch, customers will be able to navigate to various touchpoints on Amazon android app. They can search for products and add items to cart among many more using their voice in Hindi or English.

Rival company Flipkart is also betting big on the vernacular languages and voice-based shopping. Flipkart has expanded to 11 Indian languages spoken by nearly 75 per cent of India’s population. Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi were included in a span of 1.5 years. This year Flipkart had said its app will have Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi to make e-commerce inclusive and accessible to Indian language users. The aim is to bring the next 200 million customers online by bringing state-of-the-art technological solutions to democratize e-commerce in India

Flipkart said that its vernacular platform is witnessing impressive adoption across the country. According to usage trends, over 95 per cent of the customers who opted for a vernacular language experience continued with the same, showcasing customers’ acceptance of these capabilities.