1. Indian Languages Market: The Complex Script
Senthil Nathan, Langscape

2. India = China?
India = Europe?
India = ASEAN?

3. Indian Economy is Multilingual

4. 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

5. 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

6. Not provinces, but ‘the linguistic states’

7. 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

8. 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…

9. Hindi
One of the two official languages of India
Population: 322 (L1) (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

10. 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.

11. Hindi and Tamil: The Size is NOT the only metric. Demography is…
Courtesy: The Economic Times. March 11, 2018

12. Emergence of the Indian Languages Market Coincides with Mobile / E-commerce Revolution

14. The perception started to change after 2017 KPMG-Google Report!
Finally the Indian languages arrived on the global languages market map…

15. from KPMG-Google Report
Some takeaways
from KPMG-Google Report

16. 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

17. Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017

18. Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017

19. Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017

21. Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017

22. Courtesy: Indian Languages: Defining India’s Internet: A study by KPMG in India and Google 2017

23. Who are localizing into Indian languages in the past two decades?
the who’s who of global tech giants…

24. 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.

25. 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…

26. Think India, Think Multilingual.

28. 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