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Business News/ Industry / Infotech/  Giving the Internet a local language flavour
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Giving the Internet a local language flavour

Sensing a business opportunity, start-ups have begun providing software solutions to help firms and individuals access content in local languages

Vishal Anand (left) and Virendra Gupta of Verse Innovation. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint (Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint)Premium
Vishal Anand (left) and Virendra Gupta of Verse Innovation. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
(Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint)

The number of Internet users in India could increase 24% with greater availability of local language content, says a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and market research firm IMRB International. Sensing a business opportunity, start-ups have begun providing software solutions to help companies and individuals access content in local languages. Mint profiles four such start-ups.

FIRM: Verse Innovation Pvt. Ltd

ENTREPRENEUR: Vishal Anand and Virendra Gupta

FOUNDED: 2010

LOCATION: Bengaluru

EDUCATION: Delhi Institute of Technology, IIT-Bombay

Anand and Gupta realized that about “95% of the phones in India don’t support local languages". They conducted a study on local languages, and stumbled upon the “huge opportunity" in this space. After starting with technological solutions, they ventured into content, beginning with news.

Verse has built an online regional news aggregator app called NewsHunt to browse news and read ebooks, and iPayy, a mobile carrier-based billing solution. NewsHunt provides news in 13 local languages from over 100 news sources, with over 25,000 articles every day. The current user base is 75 million, which the company is looking to double by FY16. It offers books in 10 local languages from across 18,000 publishers, with an average price of 35.

“As India moves from a 100 million to 500 million smartphone user base, it is critical to bridge the gap of making available relevant content and applications for Indian language users," said Anand.

The company raised 250 crore from Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Falcon Edge and Omidyar Network in February. By the end of this month, it is planning to expand to other areas such as test preparation for vocational exams and making local language mobile apps and games.

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Vivekananda pani (left) and S.K. Mohanty. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

ENTREPRENEUR: S.K. Mohanty, Arvind Pani and Vivekananda Pani

FOUNDED: 2010

LOCATION: Bengaluru

EDUCATION: IIT-Bombay; National Institute of Technology, Rourkela; Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology

The Pani brothers always knew that local languages would pose a challenge for mobile phones. But it was only five years back that they launched Reverie, because they wanted to get the timing right.

“India spends $20 billion on local language content, in terms of print, television, cable and satellite services," said Arvind Pani over the phone. The company was started with an initial investment of 50 lakh. It provides local language services to companies and consumers. It works with 20 clients including handset maker Micromax Informatics Ltd, Celkon Impex Pvt. Ltd and Best IT World (India) Pvt. Ltd. “The companies can integrate their existing services with our cloud and create content in 11 local languages. For consumers, the services include providing the mobile keypad and converting the contact list in various languages through the app," said Pani.

The company won the $100,000 QPrize in 2011, an international seed investment competition organized by Qulacom Ventures. This was followed by an angel investment of $150,000. It is looking to raise a series A round of funding by July.

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Rakesh Kapoor. Photo: Manoj Verma/Mint

ENTREPRENEUR: Rakesh Kapoor

FOUNDED: 2011

LOCATION: Gurgaon

EDUCATION: BITS Pilani

For Kapoor, Process Nine is the second coming in the local languages’ space. His first company, which was set up in the early 1990s, had a partnership with Microsoft Corp. (India) Pvt. Ltd to provide local language services for Windows in India. But Kapoor was quick to sense that the next major shift in local languages would be brought about by mobile phones, and this prompted him to set up Process Nine Technologies with an initial investment of 1 crore.

“Every e-business today needs a localized language information and search engine to tap the the potential through local apps and content," said Kapoor over the phone. It has partnered with Snapdeal to translate 200 million words in six local languages. The company has two models, per word translation charge and an annual subscription model rate. It provides tools and components such as fonts, keypads, spellchecks and translations to mobile device manufacturers in 21 Indian languages.

The company works with clients in the retail, travel, mobile devices and other sectors.

It recently raised a so-called series A, or first, round of funding, but Kapoor did not share details about the amount or investors citing confidentiality agreements.

He is looking to use the funds to acquire more customers, technology enhancement and international expansion to other Asian countries in the next 12 months.

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Jagdish Sahasrabudhe.

ENTREPRENEUR: Jagdish Sahasrabudhe

FOUNDED: 2010

LOCATION: Pune

EDUCATION: University of Pune

LinguaNext helps companies generate output in local languages without altering the application code or database. It has worked with many government agencies, manufacturing companies and public sector banks to bridge language gaps. A case in point is the Hindi translation that is available on mylpg.in, the government website for cooking gas services.

“Linguify, our flagship product, allows users to operate the software in any language of their choice. We also provide a dictionary for every language and client that our software is used for," Narendra Nayak, executive vice-president, said over the phone. The company’s solution allows banks to provide passbooks in local languages, he added.

LinguaNext is working with mobile handset makers and app providers to allow availability of apps and content in local languages.

The company earns revenue from its annual subscription-based model and software services and local dictionaries.

LinguaNext said it provides its services to 90 large companies. It raised its first round of funding from Helion Venture Partners in 2014. The company has over 100 employees and is looking to expand to Japan, Latin America and South-East Asian countries in the next one year.

EXPERTSPEAK

There aren’t too many investors who are bullish on the local language space. However, every company will have to have a local language strategy in place. Flipkart, Snapdeal, Quikr and others are already in the process of doing so. Consumption growth of local languages is exploding, YouTube is a good example to track and measure this.

New companies would have to alter strategy quickly to make use of this growth. In fact, start-ups in the space of providing local language solutions to other enterprises would have to remodel to provide direct services to consumers.

There will be a few challenges that start-ups in this space would have to deal with. There would be a need to be a mobile-only company with low-customer acquisition cost that cannot be as high as 50 and the need to create mobile apps, software solutions that are compatible with smartphones, which fall in the price range of 5,000-7,000.—Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director, Matrix Partners

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Published: 04 Mar 2015, 06:42 PM IST
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