The Bharatiya Web

Less than half a decade ago, reading or emailing in a language other than

English was a far-fetched thought. Spots of Hindi written in English could be

seen in e-greeting cards during festival time or below emblems and icons. Today,

websites such as BBC, MSN, Yahoo!, IBM and many more have not only customized

their content to countries like India, but also created sites in Indian

languages. News, entertainment, emailing, chatting in more than 11 Indian

languages is possible without being hampered by technological restrains like

downloadables and separate software installation. But this is still a scarce

realization of the need that actually exists, especially with increasing reach

of the Internet, high pace expansion of e-Governance, and the keeness of Indian

Internet users to switch between English and their spoken language.

Things looked slightly brighter when the vernacular press went online to

launch their Web editions. However, this was marred by a very low penetration

rate, inability of newspapers to differentiate between a print and an online

edition, and the discomfort of the already scarce user base in making their

systems comply with the required technology. What these language newspapers

could never provide, making it even more distant from the user, was the emailing

feature.

The Early Birds



The problem facing the growth of local language portals were many, but the

need was unavoidable as the Internet went beyond the metros of India to

non-urban cities and town, where English lost out to Indian languages. In a span

of two years, global names in the Internet arena went local, providing

localized, tailor-made content. Today MSN India, Yahoo India, Google, AOL,

Indiatimes, Sify and Rediff are providing (or are in the process of) localized

content in Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, to name a few.

The spurt of local language content was also seen as an offshoot of Web

globalization where multinationals started regarding language content on their

websites as essential for building traffic and revenue, especially when a

significant portion of online-sales comes from countries other than that of

origin. It was realized that in the online world, the words and image describing

a product had significant effect on the consumer in the absence of physical

proximity. A host of consumer goods and services websites became multilingual,

providing navigation in languages like Spanish, Japanese or French, but in most

cases, the need for downloading software to make the browser compatible was not

done away with.

MSN India was one of the first among the known international players to go

local in terms of vernacular content. MSN India launched MSN Hindi, MSN Tamil,

MSN Telugu, MSN Kannada and MSN Malayalam along with Windows Live Messenger in

Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam in 2006. Before MSN India launching

regional portals in 2006, our market research identified the top five language

users online. News, lifestyle, movies and sports are the major content these

users looked for online, says Krishna Prasad, producer, MSN India.

Beyond News & Views



While news, politics, and entertainment were the most popular among local

language users on the Web, it was emailing in local Indian language that caught

users attention.

According to a recent report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India,

45% of the Indian Internet users go online for emailing. Webdunia, Indias first

Hindi portal that started with a mission of making the Internet accessible to

every Indian in his own language, has a credible presence in this space with the

website available in nine Indian languages, and email and chatting in eleven.

We had a mission and it was our conscious decision not to go the English way.

Emailing and search in different languages, especially in Hindi, is very popular

among our users says Pankaj Jain, president & CEO, Webdunia.

Taking a step ahead in its effort to offer country-specific needs,

Yahoo!India, recently, announced Yahoo!Mail in Hindi, where users can write and

read emails in Hindi. Yahoo mail in Hindi is relevant to the 200 mn Indians who

are expected to come online in the next few years. This will also be an

attractive product for a large section of our advertisers, who want to reach out

to the non-English speaking Indian population, says Pranesh Anthapur, chief

administrative officer, Yahoo! India.

As content in local language was being generated and websites introduced

features in multiple languages, discovering them was a challenge. Two minimum

criteria were required for this to happen; a search engine enabled to search

language content and websites in Unicode. Switching to Unicode has enabled our

users to type and read in Hindi or any of the 11 languages, with having to

download software and with a regular keyboard. Changing our old data into

Unicode also made sense, says Jain from Webdunia.

There are as many as 4-5 mn sites on the net in local languages. However,

search engines did not support them. So, even if there was content in Indian

local languages on the Web, it was not discoverable. Through Guruji.com, users

can search for content in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayali and Kannada. Three more

are in the pipeline, says Gaurav Mishra, co-founder, Guruji.com. The portal

pioneered local city search and is the first Indian Web search engine.

Profiling the User



It is a common belief that net savvy people are fluent in English. English

content continues to be the most popular. But, changing user typography

indicates that a large chunk of Internet users have a fascination for local

language content, while for a larger portion, it has become a dire need. As an

only Indian language portal, Webdunia is betting big on potential users who have

not been introduced to the Internet yet including those who only know one

regional language.

BharatMatrimony, a leading matrimony site recently started offering content

in eight regional languages. Murudavel Janakiraman, CEO, BharatMatrimony, says,

By introducing content in regional languages, our main aim was to make the

parents comfortable. However, though BharatMatrimony has gone ahead to

introduce multi-language content, Janakiraman believes that local language

content would only bring about incremental benefits and would not be a key

driver of Internet growth in India.

We got a call from a teacher in Mumbai who said her students find our Hindi

search engine very useful in doing their homework. Also, through language

search, people like my parents and others from their generation have been able

to rediscover a lot of things, says Mishra. According to the research by

JuxtConsult on vernacular content users on the Web, the profile that emerges of

vernacular content users is of a slightly older, better educated, upper/middle

class Internet user, with every second such user coming from South India.

Still a Long Way to Go



With respect to the proliferation of vernacular content on the net, and

comparing it to the bleak situation that existed some five years ago, the growth

can be typically categorized as noticeable, fast, and diversified. However,

there seems to be lack of orientation, as websites that essentially need to be

in local language, remain uninfluenced by the trend. Indian railways, IRCTC, the

government states and RTI portals, e-banking portals, especially State Bank of

India, Reserve Bank of India, e-ticketing among others are not available in any

Indian language, not even Hindi. In most of the cases, there is no daily need

for content generation as the main requirement is to make the forms,

procedure/instructions and transaction gateways available in Hindi, and

eventually, more regional languages, so that users are more comfortable.

The prospects for growth are definitely much more than what has been explored

in the space today. According to a report by JuxtConsult, Against 60% of all

regular online Indians preferring to read in local Indian languages, only 12%

actually check local language content online. If we count numbers, it means that

on a potential base of almost 15 mn, only 3 mn online Indians check local

language content on the net. It indicates low overall relevance and value of

the existing local language content on the net. The yawning gap is largely

because of the absence of language equivalents of popular online content

areas. Mrutyunjay, co-founder, JuxtConsult, says, There is not enough local

language content on the Internet. Another major problem facing regional language

portals are that they have not been able to publicize their portals. Recently,

Webdunia has launched a national brand building campaign to achieve higher top

of mind recall among Internet users in Indian languages. Another interesting

observation of the report states that vernacular content users do not

necessarily originate more from smaller towns, where Metros and urban uptowns

account for over 52% of the users and emerging and smaller towns account for the

balance 48%.

Popular Indian portals like Rediff and Indiatimes do not have content in

local Indian languages yet. In the next four years, those who are not in local

language, are in serious trouble, says Mrutyunjay. The Internet has grown by

over eleven times in the last seven years and apparently, the boom is not being

driven by metros but by smaller and non-metro towns according to IAMAI as well

as JuxConsult, and the growth is spanning all socio-economic categories. This

growth is somewhere being hampered by lack of critical content and important

sites lacking language content. Also, hindering the growth is lack of capital

backing as many smaller portals do not have the financial muscle to launch and

manage content on multiple sites, in multiple languages. What cannot be

discounted is the growing interest in this space with even the Indian government

deciding to promote Indian language domain names from January 2008. Search

engines are also in talks with portals to provide language seach, especially in

the new phase of Internet expansion into non-metros and small towns.

Shikha Das



shikhad@cybermedia.co.in