Language?—?boon v. bane

India is called a subcontinent for a reason, the diversity across the country makes it appears like a continent. Diversity comes a set of it’s own challenges like beliefs, work ethics and means of communication. Native tongue has an unspoken bond; when a person speaks your tongue, you build an instant trust (consciously or subconsciously).

9 out of 10 users prefer viewing content in their own language.

It goes without saying that in a country like India with all it’s nuances and subtleties, businesses need to tailor their messaging across different regions with culture and language in mind for successful penetration.

For a business, it’s all about brand building and associated trust both with customers and employees. Imbibing regional language as a part of company culture is an easy and a rewarding exercise that goes a long way in outlining company success. Unfortunately, Asian businesses thriving in a part of the world with a hotpot of cultural confluence do not leverage on language as much as their western counterparts do. Trend-setters like Tinder and Uber have embraced language to deliver a personalised experience through their apps, and it makes perfect sense. Why would I trust an app that isn’t in my local language and trying to provide hyperlocal services, be a taxi-hailing, dating or even groceries. On this side of the pale blue dot, InMobi ranks 12 as the highest adopter of language. Very few Asian companies have made that list and they are sluggish in “learning” new languages.

If you have employees spread across the Indian landscape, language localisation is a necessity to ensure you operate like a cohesive unit. As you penetrate more into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, towns and villages, localised content plays a big role in stickiness of your product/service. That’s where our team (3 guys from different parts of the country) believe language plays a key role in Appunfold’s product offering. Not only do we allow our customers to reach out to their app users (customers or employees) through regional content in the form of text, but also with audio voice over. That’s right, you can record and push localised vocal content relevant to a particular region. All these options are just a click-of-a-button away and text translation, in most cases, is automatic. It’s our way of saying we know what it takes to build a business in India.

Source: https://blog.appunfold.com/multilingual-support-f2b29e37ffa5#.wwszpqolq