Amazon Hindi Voice Shopping: Expanding Reach in India

Amazon Expands Voice Shopping to Hindi in India

In light of reports concerning an internal investigation into potential bribery of Indian government officials by its legal team, Amazon has announced plans to introduce voice shopping functionality in Hindi. This expansion is scheduled to occur prior to the Diwali festival in early November.

The e-commerce leader, having launched English-language voice shopping last year, stated that the Hindi version will become available in the “coming weeks.” Users will be able to utilize voice commands, such as “joote dikhao” (Hindi for “show me shoes”), to search for products and monitor order progress.

Addressing the Language Barrier and Rise of Voice Search

With only approximately 10% of India’s 1.3 billion citizens fluent in English, the demand for localized digital experiences is substantial. Voice search has experienced a significant increase in India recently, driven by new internet users who find typing on virtual keyboards challenging.

Numerous technology firms, including Amazon’s competitor Flipkart, have been actively working to incorporate support for regional languages and voice queries – often implementing both simultaneously.

Currently, the voice shopping feature will be exclusively accessible to Android users.

Amazon’s Commitment to Voice Technology and Localization

“Since the introduction of voice shopping in 2020, we’ve been encouraged by the growing adoption of voice by Amazon.in customers for their shopping needs, which has doubled year-over-year,” stated Kishore Thota, Director of Customer Experience and Marketing at Amazon India.

“We remain dedicated to developing new voice features to enhance the shopping experience and make it more enjoyable for our customers.”

Expanding Regional Language Support

This rollout represents a larger initiative by Amazon to localize its services. The company also announced that its website and applications are now available in Marathi and Bengali.

Amazon’s website already provides support for five other regional languages: Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

“Our goal with regional language shopping is to make ecommerce more accessible, relevant, and convenient for customers,” explained Thota.

“Tens of millions of customers visit Amazon.in each month using regional languages, with 90% of these users residing in tier 2 cities and below. We are pleased to extend the Amazon.in experience to our customers in Marathi and Bengali this festive season.”

Potential Voice-Based Payment System

Recent reports from The Ken, an Indian news source, suggest that Amazon is also developing a voice-based payment authentication system. However, the company has not provided any comment on this matter.