I have seen and worked on number of projects where foreign players want to launch their website to Indian audience. The first thing they think is that the website should be translated to Hindi, because Hindi is the major language of Indians. Well, to be very specific, Hindi is the major language but not too many people use it while surfing or buying products/services online. English is fairly largely used though having a Hindi or other regional language version is not bad at all.
But make sure that you have other regional languages also because in India, there are number of states where people don’t understand or read Hindi. It’s just a trend or so-called belief to think that Hindi is the national language of Indians and they all know it.
We have more than 20 national languages and people belonging to different regions don’t know every language. They prefer to do it in their own language.
Take for example the state of Karnataka. People there speak and read Kannada as their official language. So, if you want to target people in that state, launching a website in Hindi would not serve any purpose.
So, if you really want to enter the Indian market, you will need to go for multiple Indian languages. The alternative is that you launch it in English only. 🙂
Indian languages to consider:
- Hindi
- Bengali
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Kannada
- Malayalam
- Marathi
- Gujarati
These languages should suffice for your business.
Just make sure you don’t have a software translate your website to any of the Indian language. Use human translation and try to get it verified before making it live. The syntax and the context of the language could differ very majorly when used for websites.
