Indians following IPL are asking Alexa five questions on cricket every minute

Mar 25, 2019, 11:49 IST

As IPL fever takes over the country, Amazon Alexa answers over 5 questions a minute to do with cricketBusiness Insider India

During the Indian Premier League (IPL) Indians are asking Amazon's virtual assistant, Alexa, more than five cricket related questions every minute.
Certain IPL teams have launched their own set of skills on Alexa so that fans can follow updates.
Honing in Alexa's cricket skills in a part of localising Alexa for India and its users.

Amazon's bid to make Alexa as Indian as possible for its customers in the subcontinent would have been incomplete if she wasn't geared to answer questions on cricket. Now, a year after those skills were integrated into Alexa, she is flooded with five questions every minute on cricket alone.

The questions particularly pile up when the Indian Premier League (IPL) season is in full swing. The annual domestic cricket league pulls in over 700 million viewers.

Amazon's Echo device is one of the options for those missing out on the live action.

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In an interview with Business Insider India, the country manager of Alexa Skills at Amazon India, Dilip RS, explains that the Alexa Skills team in India has been working with cricket teams like the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bangalore to launch their skills on Alexa. This allows users to follow their favorite team's podcasts, hear interviews, and listen in on player facts etc.

People want to know cricket scores but during IPL they want to look at their favorite teams. So, Mumbai India, Royal Challengers Bangalore and a couple of other Indian teams have build skills on Alexa.

Dilip RS, country manager of Alexa Skills at Amazon

However, Alexa's commentary does not stop with IPL as the cricket fever continues through the year. Some of the most popular questions posed include, "Alexa, what's India's score," "Alexa, what's the cricket score," and "Alexa, when is India's next match?"

And to make the most of India's love for cricket, Amazon is building on Alexa's capabilities. Dilip claims that, during an ongoing match, she's capable of answering questions like, “Alexa, what's the projected score,” or “Alexa, how many sixers did Kohli hit?”

If users want to check their own knowledge of cricket trivia, launching Alexa's Cricket Assistant — yes, there's irony in an assistant having its own assistant — can help by letting fans play the ‘Daily Cricket Trivia' challenge.

Integrating cricket skills for Alexa is a part of Amazon India's process to make Alexa more Indian.

So, that was a very important part of us to focus and try to make Alexa more Indian. And, the next part is making sure Alexa is able to answer to all India related queries about festivals, about holidays, about who's the indian pm, indian cricket related information, bollywood related information. These are questions that no other market might ask as much but in India, people will obviously ask what is local to them.

Dilip RS, country manager of Alexa Skills at Amazon

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