Vernacular Adoption in Business : 3 Cases

We're in ultra-comfortable period where Groceries, Food is getting delivered to us in span of few minutes while in other hand- we're still expecting our end customers to satisfy the criteria of understanding English and prefer English as their source of communication to make best of services we offer. Which often kills the very advantage of globalization in many businesses.

Is Vernacular Adoption really missing? isn't this topic too old?

Vernacular Adoption is improving in Digital Ads, Social Media videos and even few e-commerce players allow users to navigate and view content in their local languages, But the True Business initiatives aren't really going vernacular.

Let's take few examples

Case 1: Youtube

Youtube could've come up with feature of Automatic audio conversion- which allows user to view the same video but hear the audio in language of their choice in the same time period allocation- going by the amount of data Youtube has- within few years and with the help of machine learning- this can be even done in real time for the live videos

Why this could have been a good move?

a. Avoids Duplication of data in different languages- Although duplication has other factors too- but Youtube could easily reduced the data size by over 10% by minimizing duplication of same data in different languages by different/same channels- 

• Which also improves their Youtube search relevancy to deliver best videos irrespective of the language- 
• This in-turn increases competition (Data science in Hindi and data science in English is expected to deliver similar results with few exceptions) and improves overall quality of content that gets prioritized

b. The Tone and style of communication can still be retained

As the system recognizes the audio in the given file and changes it to different languages based on the publisher inputs- the style of the author communication can still be maintained without additional work.

This could also be adopted to e-learning platforms

Case 2: Google Search

Although there's lot of searches happening in Anglo-Vernacular language (Vernacular search queries written in English), The Direct Vernacular Searches remains on lower side- reason is because of complexity of vernacular keyboards in smartphones

In Certain Categories like Groceries, Daily Essentials- Anglo-Vernacular searches are on average growing 15% higher than English searches 

Where is Google missing out?

a) Direct Vernacular searches 

That could've effectively increased google searches in Tier 2, 3 locations by large margin- This could have been done by Mass promotion of Usage of Google Voice feature instead of Anglo-Vernacular searches 

As the results will also be in vernacular language- local user could be easily glued to the search mechanism.

b) Vernacular Search Ads

This is lost opportunity- as vernacular Ad CTRs are expected to be on better side because of the freshness and entirely new google search users entering the system-

C) New pattern of searches

Vernacular searches if followed with google voice search is expected to bring the long tail searches to the table- Long tail+ Vernacular combination could have easily helped google understand user intent to much better levels than English regular searches 

Case 3) Multiplex Theatres

Multiplex Brands like Inox and PVR Could've come up with single screen- Multiple Audio Concepts to engage different set of people in one go

Lately, most of the movies that are shown in multiplexes are PAN India movies with movies voice dubbed with other major Indian languages- people could be given headsets with theatre effect soundings- where all voices are given through headphones in language of user's choice. This could help friends of different background watch movie in same theatre at time which can improve business by good margin 

Why Vernacular Adoption in Business is Important?

One of the very reason why Vernacular Adoption is neglected in Businesses is because of the assumption that people who don't know English- aren't good consumers which isn't case in reality at-least for majority of brands. The Technology adoption is slowed down in India for last gen people and people in T3, T4 cities because of the necessity to understand an additional language to completely make use of technology in the early days.

English still remains to be important because India is Majority service based companies serving the US, Canada Market clients, As the startup culture tends to evolve further and Indians starts serving the Indians more than foreign clients- Vernacular Adoption become the need of the hour- still 95% of video consumption happens in vernacular languages with over 85% of Indians are non English speakers

Source: Nasscom