Walmart-owned Flipkart announced the introduction of 'Hindi' version of its e-commerce platform. With this move, Flipkart is looking to tap into the next 20 Indian crore customers coming online to buy things online using e-commerce. The launch of Flipkart's Hindi interface will happen in a phased manner while the launch will be completed in a month. Flipkart's plan for Hindi interface was implemented after months of intensive research and understanding requirements of the native language customers coming online, hailing from India's tier II and tier III cities.

Why is it important?

As per industry experts, 90 per cent of new internet users in the country are native language speakers. So, Flipkart sees the market and business opportunity there. That is why Flipkart now wants its users to experience native e-commerce. Flipkart said that users would be able to see all the information and search for their products in Hindi Flipkart is also adding audio-visual navigation capabilities to Flipkart app in its app in the upcoming phases. Without the language barrier, Flipkart believes this native language capability will play a significant role in further adoption of e-commerce in the country

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"We are committed to developing solutions that will help the adoption of e-commerce by the next 200 million consumers who come online. We have deployed around 80-90 per cent of our resources towards solving for Bharat with our Hindi interface being one of the biggest catalysts in this transition," Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said. "As a home-grown company, Flipkart has the advantage of understanding the Indian market and all its nuances in a much better way."

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Flipkart will be available in more Indian languages soon

Flipkart has plans to launch to take this approach further with few more Indian languages in the coming months. This way, Flipkart is looking to bring more consumers online through native language interface. Last year, Flipkart acquired Liv.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up that converts speech to text in 10 Indian languages. Last year, Amazon started its Hindi offering to bring the next 10 crore customers online to experience e-commerce. More details are awaited as to when the full-fledged Hindi interface of Flipkart website will go live.

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Recently, Flipkart also announced that it would reduce single-use plastic. Flipkart said that it had already reduced 25 per cent plastic application since 2018. Flipkart said that it had applied to the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework, targeting 30 per cent plastic waste collection this year. Flipkart also detailed its plan to make use of renewable alternatives and recycled plastic use in packaging.