Google Has A New Gameplan To Win More Internet Users In India

Aimed at bringing 300 million people online, search giant Google has partnered content providers along with government agency, CDAC to make regional content available on Internet.

It has announced the creation of the Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA), and through this group it is looking at promoting the growth of Indic-language content online. The ILIA is composed of Times Internet Limited, Patrika Group, Process Nine Technologies Pvt Ltd, Prost Innovation Pvt Ltd, Reverie Language Technologies Private Limited, Ver Se Innovation/NewsHunt, Webdunia.com etc in addition to Google. Under this alliance, Google also launched a new website called www.hindiweb.com which curates content from these content partners in Hindi language.
In order to provide Internet connectivity to 300 million by 2017, Google will also offer voice search service in Hindi. Going forward, Google also plans to include other Indian languages such as Tamil, Marathi and Bengali.

"India has about 200 million Internet users with about 5 million new users being added every month with 100 percent coming through mobile devices. At this pace, India will overtake the US in terms of number of users in the next 12 months," Google India Vice President and Managing Director Rajan Anandan said.

“However, only 198 million people in the country are estimated to be proficient in English with most of them already on the Internet. The group is committed to promoting the growth of Indic- language content online. The Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA) hopes to enable 300 million Indian language speakers to become highly engaged Internet users by 2017," he added.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar welcomed this move and expressed hope that if Internet becomes available in Indian languages, then the number of Internet users in the country will go up to 50 crore. “This will help in realisation of digital India initiative of the government. It is an important initiative," he said.
Disclaimer: Business Insider India is run by Times Internet Ltd. which is part of the ILIA