NE BUSINESS BUREAU
BENGALURU, APR 9
Flipkart on Thursday announced the introduction of Gujarati language support on its platform as part of its vision to make online commerce more inclusive and accessible for Indian language users. With the addition of the country’s sixth most widely spoken language on the Flipkart app, customers across the country will now be able to use the platform in their preferred native language, says a company release.
From display banners to category pages and product descriptions, Flipkart offers an end-to-end Gujarati experience to millions of customers by utilising a judicious mix of translation and transliteration of over 5.4 million words on the platform to bring a natural language experience. This includes transliteration of terms such as EMI, delivery, filter, cart and OTP instead of simply translating them to enable better resonance with the native experience, helping users get acquainted with e-commerce terminologies, the release added.
The introduction of Gujarati is in line with Flipkart’s aim of leveraging locally developed language solutions to help bring the next 200 million customers on board with e-commerce. With the two new languages, the Flipkart app is now available in 8 Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali and Odia developed in a span of over 1.5 years.
Gujarati is closely linked to the previously introduced Hindi language support as both the languages are derived from Devanagari script and have several similarities. This led to a faster scale up of the language based on the learnings from Hindi and helped in bringing a natural experience.
According to industry reports, Indian language internet users are expected to account for nearly 75% of India’s internet user base by 2021. This growing base of language users, primarily from smaller towns, makes it extremely important to enable e-commerce in regional languages to offer a more personalised experience. This will also enable millions of consumers across the country to have an engaging online shopping experience in their native languages, besides creating a bigger market for Indian MSMEs/sellers across the country.
Commenting on the launch, MK Das, Additional Chief Secretary to Chief Minister, Industries & Mines, Government of Gujarat said, “As a country with thousands of languages spoken across the country, it is interesting to witness the digital world increasingly adopting Indian languages, thereby making it easier for more people to become digital natives. The introduction of Gujarati language support on the Flipkart app is a great initiative and will support millions of Gujarati speaking citizens from the state and across the country in having a frictionless e-commerce experience. This will also create an even bigger market for MSMEs & local businesses. This also ties in to our Prime Minister’s clarion call of ‘Vocal for Local’ and will play a pivotal role in bringing millions of citizens on the digital world map”.
Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Flipkart said, “We’re excited to introduce Gujarati on our platform. As a homegrown e-commerce marketplace, Flipkart is committed to bring state-of-the-art solutions to democratize commerce in India using locally developed technology & innovations and reach millions of underserved customers across the country. In a little over 1.5 years, Flipkart has expanded its vernacular universe to eight languages covering 80% of the official languages spoken across the country. With Gujarati, we are further doubling down on our efforts in bringing a natural language experience to millions of our users and creating a shared value for millions of our customers, sellers, artisans and ecosystem partners across the country”.
