1

2 Foreword

The NASSCOM Research report titled

“Vernacular Solutions: Diversity in Language” NASSCOM NASSCOM
aims to highlight the growth of multilingual Rakesh Kumar Ashish Gupta
software solutions market in India and its impact. Director - Research Manager - Research
We have tried to showcase both Global and Indian
viewpoints from a business opportunity
perspective.
Acknowledgement
Debjani Ghosh
This report has been developed by NASSCOM through a
President, NASSCOM
comprehensive study to understand the Vernacular market in India.

The preparation of this report has been possible with information

assistance from various sources including institutions, enterprises,
and start-ups in India who have extended great help to the research
team. We wish to sincerely thank all of them for their valuable
contributions without which this report would not have been possible.
3

Objective of the Research

4 Report 5 Methodology

6 Executive
Summary 7 Market
Scenario
Table of
Content
10 The Push
Factor 14 Major Market
Players / Innovators

Business Case
17 Perspective 24 Studies
4 49

Start-ups traction and

Indian market standing Innovations by Global
compared to Global scenario Organizations

Objective
Market offerings and Understanding the business
of the Revenue model
language interest areas
Report

Languages that are creating

Government initiatives in this
the most impact and what’s
area and challenges
driving them
5 Research Methodology 49

Expert Interviews Public Sources

NASSCOM
Media Articles
Global Reports Analysis
Case Studies Public Websites
6
Executive Summary 49

Market
With Global market size reaching USD 50 billion, Indian market is less than 1%
of the total but a 65% multilingual population makes it an attractive market

Driver
Smart phone market penetration to reach 50% by 2020 and will continue to be
the major driving force for vernacular solutions

Solution Offerings
Already many vernacular solution offering are available in the market attracting large
customers like news publications, e-payment, networking platforms, chat-bots etc.

Vernacular Solutions as a business

Partners and advertisers are the biggest revenue generator for the customer facing
model whereas large corporates look multilingual offering as a business enabler

Support and Challenges

Though large Corporates and Government have started offering local language
solution but the sector needs to address challenges like content creation,
outreach, dialects, etc.
7 49

Market Scenario
 8 8
Global Language services market continue to be big and growing 49

Currently India Language service market is less than 1% of Global Language Service Providers by Headquarter
the Global market

USA is the hub of Global language service providers Others, 24%

USA, 39%
Netherlands,
2%
German, Nordics and French speaking countries are the
other major language markets
Russia, 3%
Lionbridge, Mayflower Language Services and RWS Group Sweden, 4%
are some of the key Global providers
Japan, 4%
Increasing demand of CAT software (computerized program UK, 8%
to translate form one language to another) France, 5% China, 5% Germany , 6%

2022 66.5

Language Services Global Market Size (in billion $) CAGR 7.4%

2018 50

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Source: Nimdzi, Business Wire
 9 9
What makes language services a potential hit in India… 49

Vernacular allows offering business solutions and services in the country specific languages /dialects

Indian Non-English Language Internet Users (in million)

% of country population No. of Languages
in India 600
conversing in vernacular 536
500
CAGR
400 18%

300
95% 780 200
CAGR
18%
234

100 42
0
2011 2016 2021

95% 122 India’s high diversity will be the fuel for vernacular
solutions growth
High preference of regional languages over English
content has been observed among Indians
% of video Languages with
at least 10,000 70% literacy rate in India is for Non-English languages
consumption in
vernacular language speakers

Source: Business World; KPMG Report, Livemint, NASSCOM Analysis

10 49

The Push Factor

 11
11 Growth Drivers… 49

Smart Phone Users

Over 300 million smart phone users and expected to reach 450
million by 2021

Data Usage
Easy and affordable data availability making people use more internet
services

Innovate for Bharat

Growing breed of entrepreneurs focusing towards creating
solution not only for mainstream India but “Bharat”

Open Source Machine Intelligence Services

Many new open source machine learning methods are available
providing open source services online

Source: Exchange4media, Statista, NASSCOM Analysis

 12 12
Local Language Interest Areas in 2018 49

Users based on different solutions offering 6%

239 Mn 236 Mn T 6%
T
elugu
Chat Digital
Applications Entertainment 38% amil

168 Mn 157Mn H indi

Social Media
Applications
Digital News
8% Hindi most preferred language
followed by Marathi, Bengali,

Each category is expected to grow at an average B engali

Telugu and Tamil
9%
M
rate of 20% showcasing the high potential of the
vernacular market
arathi

Source: KPMG Report, Your Story

 13 13
Current market already has many local language solutions… 49

Illustrative

Video Sharing Networking Platform

News Publications e-Payments

Clip App Self Publishing Platform

Multilingual Chatbot
Audio Files Creations
Recipe Discovery Platform

Regional Operating Systems Typing Software

Text to Speech Product

Localization Platform
Service Providers

Source: NASSCOM Analysis, Your Story

14 49

Major Market Players /

Innovators
 15
15 Top Vernacular Start-ups have users in millions and catering around 10 languages… 49

Illustrative

Clip App

40 million 25 million 8 million 2 million

monthly active users monthly users registered users Monthly active users
14 Languages 14 Languages 8 Languages 11 Languages

2 million 0.5 million 1.3 million 50 million

monthly active users monthly active users users users
10 Languages 6 Languages 8 Languages 10 Languages

Source: Economic Times, qz.com

 16
Initiatives by Global Majors……..
Launched Navlekha, which render
any PDF with Indian language
content into editable text
Allowed user to post content in
12 languages
Alexa, Amazon's voice-based assistant
would be able to converse fluently in
Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and
Marathi, among other languages
Source: qz, Microsoft, business standard, moneycontrol
Providing support for email
addresses in 15 Indian languages
Hindi support for its mobile site and
android app users
Google Go, a lite version of Google
Assistant that allow users to click on
any webpage and the app will read it
out in 28 different languages
16
49
Illustrative
Google Neighbourly, use your voice to
answer your neighbours' questions, in
your respective language
Recently launched digital literacy
library in 6 Indian languages
Google Maps enabled voice navigation
in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada,
Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam
17 49

Business Perspective
 18 18
Global companies offering plethora of solutions which can also be applied in India 49

Illustrative

Multilingual Customer Care

Patent Translation

On Demand Translation Services

Personal Interpreter

Multicultural Marketing
Multilingual Staffing & Recruiting

Legal Support Services Lip synchronization

Voiceover Narration Transcription

Source: NASSCOM Analysis, Nimdzi

 19
19 Vernacular Solutions can be applied in many business scenarios… 49

Healthcare E - Commerce Banking Services

Retail Online Community Legal Payments

Source: NASSCOM Analysis

 20 Revenue Models… 20
49

Illustrative

Paid Subscriber
Users who are ready to pay for the
subscription or high end services
come under this category

B2C
Highest Revenue
Generators
Advertisement Most attractive
business model

Large user base attracts display advertisement

(Personalized, interactive, peer to peer gifting are some
other kind of advertising options currently in use)

Considering India’s large population (majorly in villages) and varied diversity, vernacular solutions will continue to be high volume
driven making it an attractive business model

Source: NASSCOM Analysis

 21 Revenue Models (cont…) 21
49
Localization acts as a business enabler in the B2B segment (2/2)...
Illustrative
Small & Medium Enterprises
SMEs usually comprise of local population
hence need localization support to work with
100% capacity and efficiency

B2B
Large Corporates
For large corporates like banks, fintech firms,
healthcare firms etc. localization helps in Kotak Bharat App
increasing traction, trust and loyalty (Kotak Mahindra Bank)

Increasing regional customer base in smaller cities leads to increasing demand for localized solutions
hence creating opportunities for language solution offerings and content translation

Source: NASSCOM Analysis

 22 Government has also started deploying local language solutions… 22
49

Illustrative

Department of Mobile phones must support
Telecom mandated the ability to type messages in
Indian Language English, Hindi and at least one
support for mobile additional Indian official
phones language. Also requires
message readability for all 22
Indian official languages.
To deploy AI-enabled voice
bots in its Unified Mobile
App for New-Age
Governance (UMANG) app
that will interact with the
users in vernacular
languages
C-DAC has enabled
Indian languages on
Pagers, Set-Top-Boxes,
Dot Matrix Printers,
Line Printers,
Handheld devices,
Digital cameras, etc.

Vernacular is at nascent stage in India and requires a substantial push from

the Government to harness this high potential sector
Source: Indian express, Economic Times, India today
 23 23
Challenges… 49
Content Authenticity
Confirming the genuine and fake
content continues to be a big task

Numerous Dialects
Vernacular Content Creation
Over 1600 dialects makes it
difficult to cover all aspects in Creating language specific content is
any solution time consuming and expensive

Accent
Outreach
Products like chat-
Increasing the bots, voice-bots have
outreach of lot of issues due to
vernacular products is accent in which
quite challenging people speak

Source: NASSCOM Analysis

24 49

Case Studies
Vernacular
 25 49

Languages Covered Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali & English

An Integrated Edu-tech platform for Technology skills in the field of IT, providing a
Product Description Personalized & interactive learning experience through bite size video contents in
Vernacular languages, personalised assessments through gamification mechanics and
connect them to the right jobs using our AI powered recruitment platform.

Geographies Objective Impact

Covered Providing personalized & 3000+ job offered
interactive learning through guvi platform
experience to every including 50+ product
Tamil Nadu unique learner and companies. Platform
creating millions of skilled consists of 1.2lakhs user,
Andhra Pradesh employable candidates nearly 70 % of user from
irrespective of gender and tier 2 & 3 cities . 55 % of
geolocation users are women coders,
50 % of leader- board are
women learners.

https://guvi.in
 26 49

Languages Covered 20+ Indic languages [Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Konkani, Tulu, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam,
Gujarati, Marathi, Marwari, Punjabi, Haryanvi, Odia, Bangla, Assamese etc…]
MultiBhashi focuses on harnessing technology (Cloud-based e-learning) to Upskill blue-
Product Description collar workforce / aspirants in job-role based spoken-English (bi-lingual teaching : in their
own native language), thereby, enhancing their Employability & Earn ability in the most
affordable manner

Geographies Objective Impact

Covered To democratize multilingual • 1.2 Million+ Users on
digital presence in India. Android App
Vision is to make 1 Lakh • 2.2 Lac+ MAUs
Across India websites and mobile apps
multilingual in Indian and • 32k+ DAUs
global languages.

https://www.multibhashi.com/
 27 49

Languages Covered Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali

Roposo is a social video platform, available in several regional Indian languages, which
Product Description aims to connect the entire country on a single platform. With 25+ interest-based
channels (from music to films and religion to politics), Roposo’s TV-like browsing
experience enables users to consume video content easily.

Geographies Objective Impact

Covered To create an Indian social
platform can understand
Indian needs and connect
Across India them with Indian audiences,
esp. those in Tier II and Tier
III cities, way better than
global platforms like
Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram.
1.50 million daily active
users with retention
growth from 20% in
August 2017 to 50% today.
From 300 posts a day in
2016 to 2,50,000 daily
video posts created by
users today

https://www.roposo.com/
 28 49

Languages Covered Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam,
Kannada, Oriya, Assamese, Urdu

The MOX Gateway is a revolutionary way of localizing a website, mobile app and
Product Description enterprise application requiring no change to existing source code or database. It is a
non-invasive method of localization that eliminates the need for time-taking changes to
be made to the existing digital properties.

Geographies Objective Impact This image cannot currently be displayed.

Covered To harness technology Over 1 billion words of

(Cloud-based e-learning) to Internet content has been
Upskill blue-collar workforce translated to various
Across India / aspirants in job-role based Indian languages
spoken-English (through
their native language),
thereby, enhancing their
employability & earning
ability in the most affordable
manner

http://process9.com/
 29 49

Languages Covered
Product Description
Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil,
Telugu, and Indian English
Gopal Indic Voice Suite aims to change this and bring the power of voice technology to
the average Indian by combining voice solutions with Reverie’s years of expertise in Indic
language technology, including NLP for Indian languages.
Indian language voice support will help in on-boarding & educating first-time internet
users - faster & easier.

Geographies Objective Impact

Covered
Gopal Indic Voice Suite was
envisioned as a solution to
Across India bring the power of voice
solutions to the first-time
internet users in India who
predominantly will be Indian
language speakers
Reverie’s solutions have
touched the lives of over
124 million Indians and
engaging them with
multiple bodies such as
Ola, Practo, eNAM -
Ministry of Agriculture,
BHIM UPI app.

https://reverieinc.com/
 30 49

Languages Covered English, Hindi, Hinglish, Tamil and other regional languages

Kiya.ai is an integrated new-age AI platform delivering an Omni channel experience to

Product Description the end consumer. Chatbot solution has a conversational interface enabled with
cognitive analytics and NLP/NLG algorithms to analyze, predict, and deliver personalized
insights to the consumer in real-time in the language of their choice.

Geographies Objective Impact

Covered To provide an end to end
The platform serves over
solution to customers in
10 lacs subscribers and
Across India real-time in a language of
process over 40 lacs
their choice and enhance
conversation per month
and their experience with
conversational bots
Globally

https://www.infrasofttech.com/
 Key Contributors 49

Rakesh Kumar Avinash Saxena

Chief Executive Officer, Process 9 Technologies Co- Founder, ROPOSO

A Serial entrepreneur with 35+ years of IT Avinash Saxena is one of the three co-founders
industry experience in India and the US. Being at Roposo - India’s leading fashion social
a business and technology strategist for Indian network. Avinash oversees all aspects of the
and Asian Languages technologies and Media company including hiring, community
industry, he has been one of the early entrant management, marketing, product development
in Software Product development space in and engineering
India.
 About NASSCOM 49

NASSCOM is the industry association for the IT-BPM sector in India. A not-for-profit organization funded by the industry, its objective is to build a growth led and
sustainable technology and business services sector in the country. Established in 1988, NASSCOM’s membership has grown over the years and currently stands
at over 2,500. These companies represent 95 percent of industry revenues and have enabled the association to spearhead initiatives and programs to build the
sector in the country and globally. NASSCOM members are active participants in the new global economy and are admired for their innovative business practices,
social initiatives, and thrust on emerging opportunities.

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