India is now one of the few countries where data is heavily consumed. With the rising popularity in regional languages, many unicorn start-ups are incorporating it into their apps and platforms to expand their customer base.
“We have realized that even kids who attend English medium schools prefer to watch our videos in Hindi for a better understanding of the subject. Adoption has gone up 4X since we launched in Hindi,” says co-founder of Byju’s Divya Gokulnath.
- With 450 million active internet users in India, many internet based companies are looking for ways to tap the market. With the cheap data and high selling of smartphones, many non-metro cities are consuming more data.
- As per Google’s ‘Year in Search — India: non-metros are driving growth across all categories. From driving search volumes in auto to the rise of personal beauty related queries many non-metro users prefer using their regional language over English
Strategy of Byju’s
According to Byju’s, a student spends 64 minutes on the mobile application. Many students watch how to solve calculus or Pythagoras’ theorem first in English, then in Hindi which made them realize that students find much comfort and ease with their mother tongue
Byju’s has launched its Hindi program in 1,700 towns and is working on introducing content in Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu, Kannada, Marathi, and Gujarati by year end
Why startups like In-Mobi are preferring regional language?
With 350 million smartphone users and 400 million internet users in India, advertising tech startup In-Mobi believes that investing in the vernacular space will pay rich dividends. “Most users on our platform are bilingual. When it comes to consumption of vernacular content, it’s as high as 80%, as against 25% in English. Also, about 60% of our audience is from tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” says Naveen Tewari, founder, and CEO of In-Mobi
