Amazon is expected to introduce its speakers, Echo, powered Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa Voice Services (AVS) in India by the end of this year. According to a report by ET, the company has already begun testing the products through select company executives, business professionals and analysts in India. Before launching the product, Amazon is making sure that its Alexa Assistant is compatible with the Indian languages. The speakers will initially use English, it will later be updated to various Indian languages including Marathi, Tamil, and Hindi. Already, a multilingual interface is being worked upon at Amazon’s facility in Chennai.
Apart from the language support, Alexa on Echo will allow India’s tech-savvy elites to sit in their homes or offices and execute their commands such as to buy groceries online or book a cab. For online purchases, Alexa will link to Amazon’s online marketplace, the second-largest in India. Presently, Amazon intends to target the same 1% that is using Amazon Prime and then expand its customer base from there. the Alexa powered Echo is expected to make every home a smart home and reduce the amount of effort you will have to put into even simple daily tasks.
Besides the diverse language barrier, the company is facing some additional problems which include large family culture and two-factor payment authentications.
ET quotes a senior executive at Amazon as saying,“We will work around these barriers using passphrases and other India-specific innovations.” Further, the analyst adds, “We expect Amazon to launch (Alexa and Echo) in the Indian market with very attractive offers in the beginning, a similar strategy used with Amazon Prime Video and something that worked well. These offerings are likely to be linked with existing users of Amazon’s services in India, making it more appealing for them.”