Comments
Vokal, a knowledge-sharing platform for Hindi users, has added 10 Indian languages, allowing sharing of information and getting answers to queries.
The Bengaluru-based start-up, which has 60 employees, said there was huge scope for such a service in Indian languages as people were clueless where to find answers for a variety of questions.
The new languages added are — Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya and Assamese.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO of Vokal, said subject experts who gave popular answers would be rated. The users can key in their questions or can even ask the app using the voice option. The app would come up with answers, if they had already been answered.
SME network
He said information in the internet in local Indian languages was meagre compared with those available in English. “The local language users are finding it difficult to get answers,” he said.
Vokal is Radhakrishna’s second venture. He was the co-founder of TaxiForSure, the cab aggregator, that was acquired by Ola for $200 million in 2015.
The start-up is building a network of subject experts from various fields. All registered users can post their answers.
The firm, which raised $6.5 million in a Series A last year, has no immediate plan to go for the next round. It is planning to monetise the content by throwing open sponsorship opportunity to the advertisers from next year. The subject experts can post their answers in audio and video formats. “Experts are vetted, verified and approved before they can start answering questions on the platform. Experts can also conduct live video sessions and share their knowledge with a large audience,” he said.
Customer base
Quoting a study by KPMG and Google, Vokal co-founder Mayank Bidawatka said the number of regional language users would account for about 75 per cent of the country’s netizen population by 2021.
“We are trying to bridge the information and knowledge gap among the non-English internet users by enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing,” he said. The users can identify certain topics and ‘follow’ subject experts.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.