Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart have been locked in fierce battle for India’s e-commerce pie. The sites currently all offer similar product selections, similar clean interfaces, and similar discounts. But Snapdeal has now brought about an innovation that can help it stand out in India’s cluttered e-commerce space. In a bid to appeal to the non-metro areas of India, Snapdeal’s site will soon be available 11 new Indian languages.
Blazingly fast E-commerce for the next 130M Indian Users – @Snapdeal in 11 more languages. #indiameetsbharat pic.twitter.com/F4crg5jnom
— Anand Chandrasekaran (@anandc) December 15, 2015
Called Project Bharat, Snapdeal claims that its latest project will enable 130 million more Indians to access e-commerce than before. The move is aimed to appeal to the Indian consumer that has internet access but is more comfortable in transacting in a language other than English. The numbers for this theory check out – only 10% of Indians speak English, while around 30% of Indians have access to the internet.
India’s economic growth in the last decade has led to increasing prosperity in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. While people in these areas now have the the economic muscle and internet infrastructure required to be a part of India’s e-commerce revolution, cultural changes have taken longer to percolate. The majority of non urban Indians still are more comfortable in their mother tongues than in English, and Snapdeal’s move to provide them an e-commerce experience in their own language shall ease their transition into the digital age.
Snapdeal will launch the news version of its sites, quite appropriately, on Republic Day next year.