A press release states that TaTa Indicom has launched its company website tataindicom.com in Hindi.
The website, which spins around the emotional quotient in keeping with Tata Indicom’s Suno Dil Ki Awaaz brand campaign.
What makes it so special?
- This initiative is Industry first from Tata Teleservices Limited, its almost unbelievable how other telecom biggies missed on this bandwagon even though they spend so much on rural and vernacular advertising.
- They have even gone a step further and made the site useful for visually impaired persons and disbled friendly.
According to them:
- It is a concerted step aimed at building a stronger emotional connect with customers.
- Tata Indicom subscribers would now be able to access detailed information about the company, its products and services, besides accessing i-choose (online retail store), Experience Centre (games and music centre), Tariff Comparison Module, Corporate Blog and the Consumer Forum.
- “This is a key initiative launched by TTSL to target customers who sometimes cannot avail unique services due to language barriers. This localized website will empower our customers to make informed decisions and know more about the company and its offerings in an organized fashion,” Mr Anil Sardana, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices Limited, said.
- The Hindi subset of the Tata Indicom website has been created keeping in mind the huge volume of users who will be comfortable in accessing it in Hindi—our national language. This will enable and help Tata Indicom connect beyond urban areas and reach out to the rural masses.”
What really is astonishing?
Despite seeing hyped launches of many sites like olx and jagran tieup with yahoo in hindi and other regional languages the total number of sites available in local languages still stands at measly and pathetic 1249-According to past study conducted by IMAI in dec 2008.
The report even report goes on to say :
Despite Hindi speaking population of above 500 million and standing at third most popular language across the world it is no where figured in even top 10 languages on the internet.
Another surprising fact is that Chinese and even other language figures in top 10 list.
FINAL NOTE:
Lack of availablity of vernacular content and minor software support are the root causes of low pc and even internet penetration India.
One thing which needs to be kept in mind is that if India wants to achieve high internet penetration then vernacular content has to be launched in tandem with other content because the English speaking population in India is just 15 crores and 60% is already logged on to internet so the problem of saturation may arise if the current online players dont take heed.
The advertisers and especially telecom biggies can learn a lesson or two because if they can spend millions on advertising cant they just spend few thousands on vernacular sites?
