Embracing India — One for All, All for One!
Brands are celebrating the rise of vernacular content and taking AI to the offline masses
A new narrative for transformation is currently trending in India. English has and continues to be an integral part of our lives. It’s everywhere, from casual social interactions to English-first brand campaigns to young parents’ conscious decision to majorly promote English as the chosen language amongst their children. It’s part of a billion people’s lives and has been growing with the growing rate of education and the extensive reach of media, whether satellite television or internet, across the country. However, while English continues to hold that prestigious position, we’re also witnessing a wave of change with vernacular languages gaining more mainstream attention. With multiple platforms coming up to promote user-generated content, people’s watch-time has been on the rise and brands’ opportunities to reach their target audience is constantly growing. Hence, it’s no surprise that brands are leaving no stone unturned to ride on this wave of change.
Change is not just taking place online, but offline as well. While digital inclusion and increasing the internet user base across India are subjects that are high on the agenda of both the government and tech companies, this new India is also striving to also include the offline audience on the growth curve. An India where good content is appreciated, irrespective of the language and where AI and ML are not merely for a few select people but are becoming a reality for the masses.
Rise in user generated content in vernacular languages
YouTube has paved the way for thousands of content creators — and multiple Hindi and regional language creators at that. Today, the likes of vloggers such as Mountain Trekker, Flying Beast, Mumbiker Nikhil, Nomadic Indian or Technical Guruji are hugely popular YouTubers. Brands love to collaborate with them and other YouTubers aspire to have a following as huge as theirs. These channels proudly showcase a variety of Hindi-first content but their following is not as linear as their content. Their subscribers base is a mix of both an English and non-English speaking audience. This sends out a very important and unique message — that users are ready to skip the barrier of language and embrace good content, no matter what the source. . This stays true for non-Indian origin content creators as well. Karl Rock, another immensely popular YouTuber is a New Zealander by origin but has been residing in India for a while now and creates videos on his daily encounters in a land that is strange yet fascinating to him. He started out casually by creating content in his broken-Hindi but very soon realized how people in India loved this, and there was no looking back for him. He now loves to surprise passers-by by interacting with them in Hindi and creating great videos while doing that. This surmises how content is indeed the king.
The gains are not just for the users, who get to enjoy good content, or the YouTubers, who get to enjoy popularity and healthy income, but it’s also brands that gain from this as well. The YouTubers have taken Influencer marketing to a whole new level. Big brands regularly send them products in the hopes of being featured in their videos and tap their million-plus subscribers. Popular YouTubers are often invited by brands to their fancy offices as guest speakers to inspire everyone with their journeys. Hence, forming the perfect trifecta!
Today ByteDance owned apps such as TikTok, Vigo Video and Helo boast of over 300M monthly active users and have taken the Indian digital market by storm. These short-form videos with an upper limit of 15 sec are wildly popular amongst users and have boosted the confidence of millions of people to create content on these platforms. Millions of these people are largely non-English speaking users, which is what ByteDance wanted to tap into and has done a great job at that. This platform has not just attracted regular folks but famous TV personalities as well who themselves are popular through their daily soaps. This has made TikTok, which is still contemplating its monetization approach, a lucrative place for brands to advertise to their Hindi user base. Moreover, brands have made sure that they don’t miss this opportunity — running successful campaigns with hashtag challenges, in-app video streaming and partnering with influencers.
Increased India-first approach by AI giants in India
It’s been a busy time for market behemoths such as Google and Amazon in India. Until the recent past, the focus has always clearly been on the non-English speaking audience. However, we now see both these giants making focused efforts towards creating a local language inclusive strategy when catering to the Indian market. While Google at their annual ‘Google for India’ event announced an addition of Indian languages on their Google Lens and Bolo app, they also announced features such as ‘voice enabled language switching’ on their Google Assistant app, which is already available in a range of Indian languages. Amazon on the other hand announced the addition of the Hindi language on their voice assistant Alexa.
Media houses and social media users were quick to note and appreciate the India-first approach of these brands. In a nation where everyone has strived to perfect their English, brands for a long time had solely focused on the English-first users. However, they have come to embrace that this nation with a billion plus population is a beautiful amalgamation of several languages and cultures, each equally important.
You can’t ignore the world’s largest offline population
India has the world’s second largest online user base, but THE largest offline user population. The Digital India programme by the Indian government and multiple such digital inclusion programmes by tech giants, such as Internet Saathi by Google, are working hard towards fulfilling the vision of a Digital India in all aspects. In the meantime, while this vision has its own journey of completion and fruition, brands are now also trying to fulfill every user’s wish of easy access to information. Right from focus group discussions to turning to behavioral science principles and all the way to the more precise technique of analyzing Big Data, all this and more is being done to understand the behavioral traits of the untapped masses, which is our large offline user base.
Google Assistant was announced at the ‘Google for India’ event, where “Project Telephone”, which is a partnership between Google and Vodafone-Idea, was launching a toll free number across India wherein users, 4G and 2G alike, can dial in and speak with Google’s voice assistant. . Users can ask questions about nearby places and get quick answers to questions around a plethora of areas and topics. Available in both English and Hindi, it is commendable on the part of the tech giants to give the offline population a firsthand experience of Artificial Intelligence. Amazon also recently turned its voice assistant Alexa into a teacher for kids in rural areas, wherein the bot was fit into a mannequin dressed as a teacher. The objective of this activity was to not just aid teachers at the school with support in responding to students’ questions, but also build a curiosity in these young minds about the advances in technology.
While brands certainly increase their PR and social share of voice (SoV) with such activities, what is commendable is the idea of catering to the more complex audiences and the achieving the goal of being of service and help based on the principle of inclusion — online or offline, English or non-English speaking.
