Indian Languages Market: The Complex Script Senthil Nathan, Langscape
India = China? India = Europe? India = ASEAN?
Indian Economy is Multilingual
How Complex? Monolingual vs Multilingual vs Polyglot English vs Hindi vs State Languages North vs South vs East vs West B2B Languages vs B2C Languages Elite vs Mass Urban vs Rural Office vs Home Formal vs Informal Government vs Private
Major Languages Hindi (Devanagari) – Indo-Aryan Bengali (Bengali) – Indo-Aryan Marathi (Devanagari) – Indo-Aryan Gujarati (Gujarati) – Indo-Aryan Punjabi (Gurmukhi) – Indo-Aryan Odia (Odia) – Indo-Aryan Assamese (Assamese/Bengali) – Indo-Aryan Tamil (Tamil) - Dravidian Telugu (Telugu) - Dravidian Kannada (Kannada) – Dravidian Malayalam (Malayalam) - Dravidian
Not provinces, but ‘the linguistic states’
Some are transnational too… Hindi: northern/central India and Pakistan, with Urdu. Urdu and Hindi are almost same; differed politically and register-wise. Tamil: Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia Bengali: Bengal and Tripura (India) and Bangladesh Punjabi: India and Pakistan Nepali: Nepal and India
English Urban Elite South and West (than North and East) Corporate B2B But English isn’t everything. India isn’t Australia or Singapore. Indian English? Hinglish, Tamlish, Mallish, Benglish…
Hindi One of the two official languages of India Population: 322 (L1) + 270 (L2) M in total Next big language market globally The language of Bollywood: entertainment and culture Union Government’s Policy Demographical growth in favor Hindi speakers
Tamil Official Language of Tamil Nadu / Puducherry 74 M Transnational: India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. Global Diaspora loving Tamil content: US, Canada, the Gulf and Europe. State Government’s Policy IT revolution starts from TN. Tamil Nadu: $230B Market Human and Social Indicators: Like Europe. Balance in growth and aspirational economy. Classical, cultural and global.
Hindi and Tamil: The Size is NOT the only metric. Demography is… Courtesy: The Economic Times. March 11, 2018
Emergence of the Indian Languages Market Coincides with Mobile / E-commerce Revolution
The perception started to change after 2017 KPMG-Google Report! Finally the Indian languages arrived on the global languages market map…
from KPMG-Google Report Some takeaways from KPMG-Google Report
42M > 234 M 234M vs 175M 18% vs 3% 9/10 Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017
Who are localizing into Indian languages in the past two decades? the who’s who of global tech giants…
Challenges Complex Market Multiple Small Markets / Fractured. Language Service Providers are in a ‘cottage industry’. No standards, No training, No Certification.. The shortage of qualified translators and PMs. Not an attractive or recognized career. Payments / Pricing Lack of government policies Lack of local corporate support No credits and No VC. Though, the change is started to happen.
Opportunities The world's seventh-largest economy by GDP. The third-largest by PPP 6-7% average GDP growth annually for the past two decades. Since 2014 (except in 2017), India has been the world's fastest growing major economy, surpassing China. 40 pc of the population (475m) has internet connection, by 2018 (Second only to China) By 2021 India will generate $100 billion online retail revenue. The number of smartphone users in India would reach 490.9 million by 2022. MORE…
Think India, Think Multilingual.
Your partner for Indian languages translation localization Content development Machine translation and more… 20 years of expertise Worked for almost all major global players from India, Singapore and USA senthil.nathan@langscape,com http://www.langscape.com