PUBG themed Hindi web-series Dosti Ka Naya Maidan

Tencent Games has announced a first-of-its-kind web series in India, based on its insanely popular action game PUBG. The five-part series, titled Dosti Ka Naya Maidan, has been developed by the PUBG Mobile India team and will go live on December 25. To tap into PUBG's viral popularity in India, the show has been created in Hindi. It also explores locally-relevant entertainment narratives such as dosti (friendship).

90% of new users coming online are Indian language users, says Google India

Hindi web consumption has grown at over 90% compared to English that recorded only at 19% growth, according to Google India. Recognising the growing demand for Indian language content amongst the users, there have been several India-first language products launched in the recent past, and the company has also integrated greater Indian language support across their existing products and services.

Google launched Voice Search in Hindi in 2014, Hindi tab on the search results page in June 2016 and enabled Hindi users to simply tap it to access search results in their language. Google Assistant was launched in 2017, and it was extended to Hindi in March 2018. "To help Indian language users more effectively benefit from the power of the web, we have launched numerous voice and language experiences across our products including Google Assistant, Maps, Search, Translate, Chrome and Gboard,” said Nidhi Gupta, Senior Product Manager, Google India.

Internet User Base in India:

• Monthly active Internet users in India: 460 Million 
• Total base of Smartphone Users: 380-400 Million 
• New internet users added per annum between 2015-2018: 40+ Million 
• 9 out of 10 new users coming online are Indian language users 
• 68% users consider Indic content more trustworthy

Twitter seeks public input in Hindi on fake photos and videos

Twitter is seeking public input on a new policy that the social network is developing about photos and videos that have been altered or fabricated. Hindi is one among the 6 languages the inputs have been sought in as India remains one of the fastest growing markets globally. The other languages are English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.

Twitter said synthetic and manipulated media is any photo, audio, or video that has been significantly altered or fabricated in a way that intends to mislead people or changes its original meaning. These are sometimes referred to as deep fakes or shallow fakes.

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HDFC website in Hindi and 5 other Indian languages

Housing finance major HDFC Ltd  has localised its website in six Indian languages, in addition to English, to help home buyers get home loan related information more effectively. The website content is now also available in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, even as English continues to be a widely used language on digital platforms in India, HDFC said. HDFC Ltd is the only corporate in the financial sector to offer content on its website in six Indian languages, it added.

The growing use of internet and smartphones and rising base of regional language users, particularly in smaller towns, has made it important to focus on building digital properties and content where relevant information is available in local language as well, it said. [Source]

Flipkart, Amazon bank on Hindi apps to tap the next 20 crore users

E-commerce major Flipkart recently launched its Hindi interface, allowing for its products across platforms (website and app) to be browsed in the language. Amazon, too, now offers Hindi browsing options on its website and iOS app; last year, the global e-commerce behemoth had introduced Hindi on its mobile site and Android app. These efforts are an attempt to capture the next 200 million users.

(Image Source: Financial Express)

Experts say the vernacular market in the country presents a massive opportunity for e-commerce players. As per a recently released report by RedSeer Consulting, there are 530 million internet users in India, of which 260 million users are ‘monetizable’. The report says a large share of this audience, 80% or about 210 million, prefers content in vernacular languages and are likely to drive the growth of consumer internet, with $300 billion in annual spending power. However, sustained efforts beyond just providing language options will be the name of the game, say experts.

After having introduced its Hindi interface, Flipkart is now gearing up to introduce audio-guided navigation on its platform to help new users on the platform. “We started with Hindi and the plan is to go ahead with other languages as well in the future. Within a year, we plan to introduce southern languages on our platform,” says a Flipkart spokesperson. Experts say Amazon, too, would use audio in some way to tap new users, given that it already has voice technology (Alexa). [Source]

Alexa kitne baje hein?

Only about 10% of India’s 1.3 billion people know English. Yet, that is the only language Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa, which was launched in India two years ago, understands in the nation. That is changing today.

The e-commerce giant informed that Alexa now supports Hindi, a language spoken by roughly half a billion people in India, as the company looks to expand its reach in the nation. Bringing support for Hindi to Alexa was in the works for more than a year, noting the unique contextual, cultural and content-related challenges that Hindi implementation posed.

Users can now ask Alexa their questions in Hindi, and the digital assistant will be able to respond in the same language. The feature, which will begin rolling out through a software update to Alexa devices starting today, currently only supports one voice type for Hindi. (For English, Alexa offers multiple voice types.) Watch the video to see her in action (Source: Quint).

In the months to come, Amazon said it plans to add support for multilingual households, which will enable members of the family to interact with Alexa in the language they each prefer. Amazon last year introduced support for Hindi language on its apps and website. It has seen Hindi usage grow on the site and app by six times in recent months, he said. [Source]

Most Of India Prefers Using Hindi For Search

A new report from Google titled “Year in Search: Insights for Brands Report” says that 70% of all smartphones-related searches in India come from Bharat. Hindi queries related to laptops and PCs have doubled while there has been a 2.3X increase in Hindi queries about smartphones and mobile phones. Also, queries in regional languages are growing faster than English in ecommerce categories like clothing, beauty, and personal care.

 “Indian language internet users are expected to account for nearly 75% of India’s internet user base by 2021, and Google search trends show a significant move in this direction,” the report said.

Vikas Agnihotri, country director, Google India, believes that the online space in India has never been more vibrant. “India has become the fastest internet consuming country in the world and the internet has now become the bridge to Bharat’s aspirations,” he added.

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