Digital consumer: Why brands should focus on local language user engagement

Brands scouring digital highways for a wider retail footprint need to focus on local language user engagement

The popular notion that premium retail, especially in glamour and technology based services, ought to focus on urban areas of the country to be profitable could well turn out to be a red herring. As more and more regional language users have come online, brands that speak in many tongues could become the biggest disruptors of their categories. 

As of June, 60 per cent of the 500 million Indian internet users are people who consume services in regional languages according to a study by Reverie Language Technologies. More than a fifth of these users use high end smartphones that cost more than Rs 11,000. Add to this the rising popularity of shopping apps in tier-2 and 3 markets and behaviourial research that shows consumers opt out of a purchase because they did not understand the instructions, and the scale of the opportunity being ignored  looks like a gaping hole.

Brands could take a cue from digital entertainment platforms and content firms that have built a library of language content to expand the viewership base. While content services will help everyone from the likes of Airtel, Jio, Voot to Xiaomi among others in their bid to grab eyeballs, at the end of the day services like messaging and content don’t require a whole lot of user engagement. “Even if one uses WhatsApp or a music streaming service, they don’t have to work very hard to understand the language of the app itself. But areas like ecommerce and banking services can get a huge boost through localisation,” said Rishi Kudale, marketing head, Reverie Language Technologies.

The majority of Indian language internet users at 69 per cent, notes the report, are from towns and villages with fewer than 100,000 people but 13 per cent of users are from larger cities with more than two million inhabitants. Users from smaller cities and medium sized towns with 100,000 to two million inhabitants make up the remainder.

“As a marketer, we see an advertisement comprised of three components: message, medium and market. The message is critical, forms the core and explains the positioning of the brand. Whatever medium you choose for getting your message across, the core always remains the same. Language is the most critical thread across these components along with brand ethos and equity. Thus, language must be tweaked, fine-tuned to suit the medium,” said Sidharth Singh, co-founder, Cupshup a marketing solutions provider. 

But what are the chief areas where Indian local language users  need help ? “It’s important to understand that these local language users are also new to internet so the whole process of designing icons and logos needs to be more intuitive,” Kudale said. For example a rural user may not recognise shopping cart icons the way an urban user will and so on.

The fact that Jio apps figure among the top 25 android apps reported by Reverie clearly shows the Reliance offshoot is managing to tap this new user market effectively. Travel platforms, search engines, payment platforms, digital marketing, gaming and e-learning are just some of the areas of digital services that are ripe for linguistic disruption according to the Google KPMG report on opportunities for Indian brands.

It is important to note that while translating content may work to a great extent across Indian language markets, high engagement users will need to transact on these apps and services. And that is where lack of localisation is a roadblock. It is to meet this need, industry watchers have noted, that everyone from the likes of Flipkart to Future Retail to the telcos are pursuing payment licenses that will allow them to control the ecosystem completely. 

Farid Ahsan co-founder & COO, ShareChat said, “To get the next billion users online, the need of the hour is to create a favourable ecosystem for non-English users, by offering them a platform to create relevant and localised content for consumption in local languages and ensure a seamless first time internet experience.”

Language lab
-   Out of a total base of 500 million, 60% internet users consume data services in regional languages
-   More than a fifth of these users use high end smartphones that cost more than ~11,000
-   The majority, 69%, of language internet users are from towns and villages with fewer than 100,000 people
Source: Reverie Language Technologies