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The country has 37 million Internet users, of which 25 million are estimated to be Yahoo users as on September 2006.

New Delhi , Oct. 18

Despite a globalised world, localisation is the favoured strategy for most companies. This is most apparent in the Internet-driven world, where companies are increasingly exploring ways to reach out to India's non-English speaking population. Yahoo India also seeks to leverage this growing trend of regionalism.

An initiative targeted at the quasi-English speaking population, the company has announced `Indichat plug-in' that would allow users to chat in regional languages using the English language keyboard. All one needs to do is download the facility and use an onscreen regional languages facilitated keyboard that would guide users while typing on the English keyboard. Initially available in Hindi and Tamil, the facility will later be extended to other languages such as Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam. Yahoo would like to extend this to 14-16 Indian languages over the next few quarters.

Regional flavour

To add a more realistic regional flavour to this chat facility, `Indichat plug-in' will have audible animated graphics in various Indian languages. Hence, instead of exchanging greeting in the conventional manner by typing it out, these audibles in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and other languages can make the chatting experience hilarious and livelier.

Yahoo India also plans to introduce Yahoo mail and search in different languages shortly. "We continuously innovate, make relevant and localise out communication products in our effort to provide the best Web experience possible. We would like to market and grow our presence in the country. Today, non-consumption of Internet would be our biggest challenge. If someone can use Internet three years hence, we look at what is it that we can do to get them to use it now," says Mr George Zacharia, MD, Yahoo India. And this is what drives Yahoo and other Internet companies to customise their products for India's diversified population.

Currently, the country has 37 million Internet users, of which 25 million are estimated to be Yahoo users as on September 2006.

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