The next big thing: How Amazon is harnessing India’s tech ability to build Alexa skills for the masses

Google Assistant will be on 1 billion devices by end of this month. That’s 900 million more than all Alexa-enabled devices that Amazon and its partners have sold so far. numbers are self-explanatory and yet, y do t paint full picture. 

Google Assistant may be on a stupendous number of devices, but a stupendous number of se devices belong to one category, phones. Android phones. Android phones wherein Google Assistant is de-facto voice assistant. Wher you like it, or you don’t. Alexa can’t afford that luxury though which means every time Amazon and its partners sell an Alexa-enabled device, chances are, buyer is choosing Alexa as ir de-facto voice assistant.  

Regardless, both Google and Amazon seem to be in a much better position w – than say a couple of years ago – which is probably why y are out bragging numbers in first place. next step, obviously, is to make Google Assistant and Alexa available on more devices. Google calls it ‘ next billion users,’ and even though Amazon does t have a catchy slogan for it yet, we all kw where it’s looking at, for its own next billion. India. 

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While Google will be looking for more and more mobile phones – KaiOS-powered feature phones will be on top of that list along with Go-edition entry-level devices – to let Google Assistant do talking, Amazon will be relying on me in/for India Alexa skills to stand out.  

40,000 developers, 20,000 Skills and counting  

Alexa me its India debut in October 2017 with 10,000 Skills and in less than 60 days of Alexa India skill store going live, Amazon h ded more than 1,000 new Skills to store. In last one year, it has doubled its Skill count. “re are over 20,000 Skills for Indian consumers w,” Amazon India’s country manr for Alexa Skills, Dilip RS, tells me. 

“We started with very basic user cases and w we are building crazier and (more) complex user cases like Ganga Quest that one of our developers has built.”

That’s in stark contriction to how things were in US back in day. service me its home debut about four years ago with just 10-12 Skills and “h hardly a handful of Skills for first year.”   

While it’s easy to say that Amazon must have h some experience with Alexa before launching in India, which is also possibly why it was able to launch with as many as 10,000 Skills in first place, even critics would agree: it wouldn’t have been easy to tailor Alexa for India. At least in beginning.  

“We have spent a lot of effort on ground,” Dilip says, ding that support from both developers and major brands has helped Alexa grow by leaps and bounds in a short period of time. t that, Amazon has t done its bit.   

“We've done a lot of webinars, hackathons, our own Alexa Developer days. We've partnered with AWS very closely to reach out to ir developer base as well. We are working with universities to train college students as well. We are going to entire spectrum and educating developers why y should build for voice, why this is right time to do it and how y can go about doing it.” 

effort is bearing fruit. Amazon has over 40,000 developers on-board w, making India “one of fastest growing developer bases for company outside of US.”  

And t just developers, children as young as 13 are building Skills for Alexa. “Today, parents tend to encour ir kids to get into coding very early on and once y do, it is rocket science to build a Skill for Alexa. It is simple,” Dilip says, ding that when he was in school, he didn’t even have access to a computer. 

“We will never underestimate potential that India brings to table. t just in terms of scale but also in terms of intelligence, tech ability and invation. We try to harness that more than anything.” 

Fighting competition, localization 

But what about challenges of localization within localization that India is kwn for. re are simply too many langus, too many dialects, to cater to. It’s easier said than done, even with that impressive developer base. Which is where Cleo comes into picture. Cleo is basically a langu learning Skill for Alexa to learn. 

“We let customers choose from our 20 different Indian langus and we don't restrict it to a dialect. If someone chooses Kanna, y can choose to speak in whatever way Kanna is natural to m. Alexa will ask you a bunch of questions, it will take you through a small gamified experience and it will learn how you're speaking. That helps us t only to learn how to respond but also how to speak back,” Dilip explains. 

Clearly, Amazon is at home in India. w more than ever. But Google Assistant is available on more devices.  

“Jeff Bezos says, customers stick around with you till y find next big thing, next best thing. y are always divinely discontent. We believe that if we do right job in building best experiences for our developers who in turn can build for our customers, things (competition) will be taken care of by mselves."

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