)
Reverie Language Technologies, a Bengaluru-based local language technologies provider, raised $4 million in series A investments from Aspada Investment Company and Qualcomm Ventures.
Sahil Kini, Vice President, Aspada will be joining Reverie's board as it looks to increase its presence in the consumer internet, financial services, government, and enterprise software verticals after this round of financing.
Reverie shall also use this round to build and grow its sales and marketing prowess in geographies such as the Middle East and South East Asia.
"Easy local language support for digital services and content in India and other markets is fundamental for the continued growth of the market and in the digital inclusion of hundreds of millions of non-English users. Through our language localisation platform Reverie aims to help create a content-rich Internet that is accessible to over 5 billion users of every local language, irrespective of the devices they use," said Arvind Pani, Co-founder and CEO of Reverie.
The investment shall also boost Reverie's initiative of democratising the creation of multilingual apps as it looks to extend its language platform to over 10,000 local language app developers over the next 12 to 18 months.
"Today over 150 million Indian mobile internet users, which is more than half of the total user base, is unable to access the tremendous innovations on the mobile web. The only way to address this problem is by building the full-stack of user experience in local languages spanning translation, input methods and in-app search. We have a deep conviction that Reverie is building the foundational technology of India's Internet," said Sahil Kini, Vice President, Aspada.
English has been the lingua franca of the Internet so far. Reverie envisions a world where multilingual apps will help users not conversant in English, do more with services offered in the digital world.
Pani, added, "Over 800 million Indians, representing more than 10% of the globe, are literate but not in English. Yet their languages forms less than 0.02% of all content on the Web. Compare this number with the less than 100 million Indian users who transact in English. This is a market waiting to happen, provided it happens in local languages, with quality of experience as easy and delightful as it is with English. Businesses can see a 10x growth in multilingual and diverse markets such as India. Reverie makes this possible and delivers it at scale through a pay-as-you-grow model".
