- Flipkart’s announcement comes at a time when Hindi’s internet user base is poised to outgrow English by the year 2021
- ‘As language is a convenience and not a barrier, we believe this native language capability will play a significant role in further adoption of e-commerce in the country,’ says Flipkart CEO
New Delhi: Flipkart on Tuesday announced the introduction of Hindi interface on its platform to make it more engaging and meaningful for the next 200 million customers coming online to experience e-commerce in a more inclusive and seamless manner.
The Hindi interface, brought about after months of intensive research, takes a holistic approach of understanding the needs and requirements of the native language customers coming online, primarily from tier-2 and -3 cities and are more comfortable using the internet economy in their native language.
As industry research suggests that 90% of new internet users in India are native language speakers, it becomes imperative to offer a native e-commerce experience to impart familiarity, comfort and aid in decision making. With the Hindi capability, users will be able to see all the information and search for their desired products in Hindi – a language whose internet user base is expected to outgrow English by the year 2021.
The Walmart-owned e-commerce platform conducted months of intensive research to understand how best Indian languages can be leveraged to offer a more native experience in bringing customers online and improve their e-commerce experience. The user research included several hours of field work, speaking to customers across different cities to gather interesting insights about their online behaviour and how a native language experience enhances their comfort and convenience for them.
The ability to provide native language support will impart understanding, reduce guesswork and make online shopping more engaging for the incoming consumers. Research has shown that consumers using e-commerce in native language gives them more confidence and independence to take decisions.
To further help consumers in their e-commerce journey through a seamless native experience, Flipkart will introduce audio-visual navigation capabilities in its app in the upcoming phases to handhold first-time users. This is aimed at mimicking the offline experience of being guided and hand-held during one’s purchase journey into the e-commerce world.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart Group said: “As a home-grown company, Flipkart has the advantage of understanding the Indian market and all its nuances in a much better way. We are committed to developing solutions that will help the adoption of e-commerce by the next 200 million consumers who come online. We have deployed around 80-90% of our resources towards Bharat, with our Hindi interface being one of the biggest catalysts in this transition. As language is a convenience and not a barrier, we believe this native language capability will play a significant role in further adoption of e-commerce in the country.”
Flipkart plans to launch this capability in few more Indian languages in the coming months to take forward its learnings of bringing more consumers online through native language interface.
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