Home FEATURED NEWS Netflix’s latest effort to make inroads in India: Support for Hindi – TechCrunch

Netflix’s latest effort to make inroads in India: Support for Hindi – TechCrunch

0
Netflix’s latest effort to make inroads in India: Support for Hindi – TechCrunch

[ad_1]

Only about 10% of India’s 1.3 billion people know English. Yet, scores of firms operating in the country offer their services only in English. Netflix, one such company, said on Friday it’s aiming to break through the language barrier.

The American on-demand video streaming giant today rolled out support for Hindi, a language spoken by nearly half a billion people in India, across its platform. From the sign up page to search rows, to collections, synopsis and payment, Hindi language is now baked in across the platform. Subscribers can choose Hindi language from ‘Manage Profiles’ section on the welcome screen.

“Delivering a great Netflix experience is as important to us as creating great content. We believe the new user interface will make Netflix even more accessible and better suit members who prefer Hindi,” said Monika Shergill, VP-Content at Netflix India, in a statement.

Netflix’s global competitors, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar also support Hindi language, though the latter has deployed Hindi in limited capacity (not for a movie or show’s synopsis, for instance).

The focus on Hindi illustrates the level of traction Netflix believes it has received in India. Most international firms tend to localize their services in India after they have fully tapped the population in urban cities across the country where English is a common language.

Facebook and Google — two companies that have each amassed over 350 million users in India — have long supported Hindi and several other local Indian languages. Amazon added support for Hindi in its app in 2018, and rolled out support for the language in Alexa last year. In June, the company said sellers can now sign up to its platform and manage their accounts in Hindi language.

Flipkart introduced support for Hindi on its platform last year, and added three more local languages in June this year.

Netflix, which competes with more than three dozen on-demand video streaming services in India, has made several major pushes in the country in the past one year to attract subscribers. Last year, it launched a mobile-only plan in India that costs less than $3 a month to expand its reach. It’s currently testing at least one more affordable subscription tier in the country.

 

[ad_2]

Source link

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here