Amazon India rolling out Hindi voice shopping experience on Android
Amazon Monday announced plans to roll out a voice-based shopping experience with support for Hindi in India in the coming weeks. This is expected to help Amazon reach a wider audience ahead of the Indian festive season. Additionally, Amazon India announced customers will now be able to access its website/app in Marathi and Bengali along with the five Indian languages that are already available.
Amazon supports English voice shopping but reaches a limited audience
Last year, Amazon rolled out the voice shopping experience in English in India. This was fueled by the rise of voice search in India as many internet users find it cumbersome to type on virtual keyboards. However, only 10% of 1.3 billion Indians speak English. And, this has pushed tech companies like Amazon and Flipkart to support voice queries in more Indian dialects.
Hindi voice shopping rolling out for Amazon India's Android app
According to Amazon, in the coming weeks, users in India will be able to search for products and check their order status using simple voice commands such as "joote dikhao" (Hindi for "show me shoes"). For starters, the service will only be available to Android users in the country. Counterpoint Research noted that approximately 98% of all Indian smartphones run on Android.
Voice shopping adoption doubled since 2020: Amazon India's top official
Amazon India's Director of Customer Experience and Marketing, Kishore Thota, said, "Since the launch of voice shopping in 2020, we are humbled to see by the adoption of voice by Amazon.in customers to fulfill their shopping needs has grown by 2X year-on-year." He added that Amazon will continue to focus on bringing new voice interaction-related features to make the experience "exciting and fulfilling."
Support for Bengali, Marathi languages added as well
Additionally, Amazon is adding support for Bengali and Marathi to browse its website and app. The two new languages join existing Indian language options, namely Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. Thota opined that this would make e-commerce more accessible, relevant, and convenient for consumers because 90% of Amazon India users are from tier-2 and below cities.
