Snapdeal goes multilingual, launches Hindi and Tamil versions

Horizontal e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.com has gone multilingual with its website starting with Hindi and Tamil languages, besides the default English language. The move is expected to help the firm reach a wider audience who are possibly not too comfortable using an English interface.

Explaining the rationale behind the introduction of regional language versions, Ankit Khanna, vice president – product management, Snapdeal.com said, "While shopping online has caught up in India, there are many users in our nation who are quite conversant with the internet but prefer content in their native languages. Local language internet users are growing at 40 per cent per year. Hindi and Tamil are languages that will help us cover a large section of North and South India."

The company said half of all sales on Snapdeal.com come from tier II and III cities and it will add more languages such as Kannada, Telugu, Bangla and Marathi. Its mobile site and apps will also be available in regional languages in a few months.

In India, 45 million users access content in their local language which accounts for a little over a third of the active internet users, according to Internet and Mobile Association of India's Vernacular Report 2013.

Snapdeal, which raised $50 million last year from a group of investors including eBay, expects a 20 per cent increase in traffic from the local language addition.

In the past, lifestyle e-com site Yepme had gone multilingual but later abandoned it. However, now it is reportedly looking at a re-launch of the platform in different languages.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)