OYO rolls out Hindi support to woo users from Tier-II, III cities

Indian hospitality firm OYO Hotels & Homes on Monday said it has started offering multilingual support, including languages like Hindi and Bahasa, on its customer app and mobile web platforms.

Multi-lingual support is now available for Hindi, English, Bahasa (Indonesia), Arabic, Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and the company plans to introduce additional Indian and international language support in the coming months, a statement from OYO said.

"Through its newly launched multi-lingual support on the customer app and mobile web platforms, OYO aims to offer a hassle-free and customised booking experience to millions of users across the world," it added.

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In June this year, OYO witnessed about 40 percent demand coming from non-metro users in cities like Jaipur, Noida, Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Indore, Dehradun, Patna, Bhopal, and Ghaziabad.

OYO said offering Hindi language support will help the company extend support to more users in Tier-II and tier-III cities in India, and reach out to the growing number of vernacular internet users.

Using the 'Change Language' functionality, users will be able to switch from English to the available languages and access the booking service.

OYO Lite, a lighter version of the customer app, has been rolled out in Hindi and Bahasa languages.

"With this multi-lingual support, we aim to make user interactions hassle-free and convenient, further adding to the overall customer experience across the world. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India and we believe that the language support makes us more accessible to our customers in tier II and III cities," OYO Hotels & Homes Group Chief Technology and Product Officer Anil Goel said.

Over the last many months, digital commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart have been rolling out vernacular support on their platforms to tap the next 200 million internet users.

According to industry reports, Hindi internet user base is likely to outgrow the English user base in India by 2021, and along with Marathi and Bengali, users will drive volume growth.

After adding the capability of browsing and transacting in Hindi to its India website and app last year, US ecommerce giant Amazon had recently announced an automated messaging assistant (chatbot) in Hindi that can help customers who prefer Hindi to engage for getting their queries resolved.

Walmart-owned Flipkart also rolled out Hindi support and plans to add other vernacular languages like Tamil, Telugu and Bengali on the platform in the coming months.

(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)

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