Yahoo India expands into five more Indian languages

Web portal Yahoo is planning to add five extra languages to its India-focused offerings, bringing the total to eight. Yahoo already provides content in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil, and by the end of the year, intends to add five more as it redesigns its home page, according to MyDigitalFC. The Yahoo Marathi and Tamil portals have already been redesigned.Although it's not clear which languages Yahoo will be adding, it is likely they will harmonise with Yahoo Mail, which in December began supporting Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Gujarati in addition to Hindi, Marathi and Tamil. Yahoo’s existing local language content is provided by partnerships with Jagran, Lokmat, Dinamalar and Anandabazar Patrika, and it may expand this model to support the extra languages, according to MediaNama, which also says:

[caption id="attachment_203101" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Can Yahoo, though, compete with Google, which provides localisation into at least 15 Indian languages? Reuters"][/caption] "Yahoo claims that its Tamil site had witnessed a growth of 160% in page views in the last month and is currently the second in the market in terms of user base. Also, its Marathi site has recorded a growth of 135% in pageviews in the last three months. The growth has prompted the company to go ahead with more dedicated indic content on its portal."

MyDigitalFC also quotes Yahoo India's corporate communications head, Arunav Sinha saying that Yahoo now reaches 80 percent of Indian users and wants to increase its share by offering local content:

"If the total internet users has to increase from current 100 million to 250 million, then it can happen only through local languages and not through English.”

Reports from the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the Boston Consulting Group at the end of last year suggested that India’s internet user base may even increase to 300 mn over the next three years. Says the Times of India:

Some $3 billion worth of e-commerce was transacted in 2011, says IAMAI. And, according to Helion Venture Partners, $20 billion worth of e-commerce will be done in five to seven years, with 12-15% of shopping going online in this period. Till date, however, the Indian Railways website for booking tickets is easily the most successful e-commerce model. Launched in 2002, irctc.co.in sold just 27 tickets online on its first day. Today, it sells 4 lakh. According to Verisign, an internet registry, about 2.6 million dotcom and 'dotin' companies are registered out of India.

Local languages will be essential to the expansion of internet usage. Hindi, Marathi and Tamil are native languages for 54 percent of the population; the other five languages combined account for 26 percent of the population. English is a native language for only 0.02 percent of Indians, although nearly 27 percent of Indians are bi- or tri-lingual.Prem Panicker, Yahoo India’s managing editor, told Business Standard that they expect to see an additional 20 mn new internet users per language. Indeed, overall, the majority of new users are expected to be local language users. Said Panicker:

“In this scenario, we have two choices-we either wait for this play to develop and then expand capacities, or we create demand by building infrastructure thereby ensuring better positioning for ourselves.”

Can Yahoo, though, compete with Google, which provides localisation into at least 15 Indian languages?The vast and crucial advantage that Yahoo has over Google is that it is a portal and as such offers the first-time visitor an immediate selection of content in their own language. Google’s localisation often extends only to localising its interface, not its content. Google News, for example, is available for India in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, half the number of local languages Yahoo will offer.Although many these days scorn the idea of a portal, seeing it as old-fashioned and outdated, for new internet users, it could be exactly what they want. It's easy to take for granted the skills users need to successfully navigate the Internet but for new users, a home page with news, business, video and links could provide a valuable bridge from the offline world to the web.