The Hindu Business Line : Say it with text

In order to increase mobile messaging, Hindi and other vernacular languages must become ‘cool’ among the Indian population. That is the market’s message.

Ray Tsuchiyama

By 2009-10, there will be enormous Indian mobile subscriber growth and hyper-competition with lowered voice call charges, and a crisis — throughout India there will not be a surge of SMS texters in English and vernacular languages.

That is because mobile users in India are not writing (composing) original text messages in great numbers.

What can be done to change the behaviour of tens of millions of Indian mobile phone users to “compose” messages? How can an India-centric “culture of texting” be developed?

Compared to other heavy texting markets such as China, South Korea, or Japan, India is a natural market for text messaging: half the population is aged 30 or younger (the best demographic segment for mobile texting) and SMS pricing has dropped from the prohibitive levels earlier.

There is great potential for a “culture of texting” in India, yet delving into language use in Indian society reveals a more complex landscape — and also an optimistic way forward.

Historically, mobile operators launched wireless networks first in the “A” Metro Circles. These huge urban centres (New Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata) contain the largest percentage of English-speakers. In order to climb the social and economic ladder, English is the key for advancement: speaking, reading, and writing. English is synonymous with technical or management learning.

The linguistic capabilities of Circle “A” inhabitants require more analysis. Even if this segment member would respond that he or she is a “Hindi” speaker, it is highly likely that office discussions and readings (manuals, contracts) would be in English. Often the Hindi chatting would be with a taxi-driver or on the phone with one’s parents, and reading a Hindi-language newspaper would be rare. It would be rarer for these urbanites to write a letter in Hindi script.

Therefore, in terms of SMS messaging, it is the old 20-80 rule: it is likely that the members of this “Circle A” club contribute the majority of mobile messaging, in English or Hinglish (rendering Hindi words in the English alphabet, such as “Namaste”). However, this “Circle A” segment is very important, as early adopters of texting and represents the vanguard of mobile texters in India.

Since the late 1990s opening of the Indian mobile market, Indian mobile operators have focused on this ‘A’ group, since they contribute much higher monthly average revenue per user (ARPUs) Yet the recent weaker growth numbers for new subscribers in Circle “A” regions show that almost every member in this “A” economic segment has a mobile phone and it is likely the entire family above the age of 15 has a mobile phone.

With this “saturation”, Indian operators have been shifting resources to ‘B’ and ‘C’ Circles, the smaller “Non-Metro” cities and towns, where mobile phone user rates have been exploding.

The historic image of ‘poor’ rural India is not current reality. According to a recent economic report, the rural India economy has grown, on average, by over 7 per cent year-on-year over the past decade, against just above 5 per cent in the urban sector.

Most importantly, between 2000 and 2005, real rural household consumption expenditure grew by 8 per cent against 4 per cent in urban India.

Given more spending power and greater literacy in non-Circle “A” India, there has been a boom in newspaper readership, and the even more positive news is the buyers include many young people. Over 300 Indian vernacular dailies are published with a total readership (with magazines) of nearly 250 million. In fact, the National Readership survey reveals that over half of India’s readers live in rural areas, and a majority of these readers prefer the vernacular press over English.

Although the rise of literacy and Indian rural spending power (which means that spending a few rupees for SMS messaging per month is a far less difficult decision) appears to signify a giant leap forward for mobile messaging in India, “reading” Hindi is not the same as “writing”, or even more specifically, sending an SMS on a mobile phone.

What, then, is the key to changing Indian mobile user behaviour? Perhaps we have to examine the status of English and vernacular languages within Indian society.

The truth is that Hindi and vernacular languages do not enjoy the status of the language of the “educated” class — English.

In India, as anywhere else, there is status and aspiration. English heralds the rise of the private sector, myriad TV channels, Internet sites such as shaandi.com and sifymax.com.

In order to increase mobile messaging, “Hindi” must become “cool” among the Indian population.

The mobile crisis of 2009-10 is not inevitable: Mobile operators in the Indian market can create an alternative future, transforming the image of vernacular languages throughout India: a brave new world of text messaging, promoting the way users would like to communicate — in English, Hinglish, and vernacular languages.

From the carriers’ perspective, Hindi and other vernacular languages (Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati, and Kannada) are the foundation for future revenue “growth”.

Yet, mobile users wrestle with the Hindi script, with 11 vowels and 35 consonants (46 “letters”) on a tiny cell-phone keypad, and assume that “Hindi is too hard” for Indian mobile users.

Comparing the Indic script to the written languages of the “texting cultures” of, say, China, the Chinese must select from up to 7,000 characters for a text message — and they easily send over 1 billion text messages per day, and never complain.

The key to texting adoption is to motivate people to compose messages: Carriers must plan and execute programs to increase awareness, educate, and promote messaging throughout India.

The numbers are clear: if 150 million Indian mobile subscribers sent one SMS per day, per month it will be 4.5 billion messages. At an average of three SMS per person a day, there will be 14 billion per month. Carriers must lead texting campaigns, starting from Hindi word spelling and fast-typing contests, original jokes and poems sent in by users, placing inserts on messaging in vernacular newspapers, instructions on radio, TV (during, say, the festive season ), and demonstrations at marketplaces — to make composing messages “easy”.

Some time ago, a leading Indian operator completed a pilot project involving Hindi predictive mobile texting demonstrations to users in Haryana and the results showed that mobile texting rose during the period, and there were messages still being sent one month after the trial.

Mobile texting in vernacular languages has the potential to accelerate vernacular language mobile applications, including mobile portals, blogging, local news.

But first, the underlying principle for texting, for easy and quick communication, bringing family and friends closer together, has to penetrate deeply into Indian society and its colourful linguistic fabric.

For this transformation to occur, India’s mobile operators must commit to the success of a “texting culture” within India, to make Hindi (and other vernacular languages) “cool”.

The author is head of Emerging Markets for Tegic Communications, a Nuance company.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Linguistics

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