Vodafone India today announced that it has partnered with WhatsApp to promote and educate users to use the app in local India language. Vodafone said that it is one of the first operators to start such an initiative and aims to empower its consumers to connect with each other in a language of their preference. WhatsApp is available in more than 50 languages, including 10 Indian languages and has over 200 million monthly active users in India.
Vodafone said that it has built customized pages in various Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil among others to drive the adoption of the newly introduced local language feature on WhatsApp.
The interface on the page has an animated step-by-step instructions that displays option of changing to different Indian languages while chatting “Updating status, chatting or even sharing messages in the language of the customer’s choice is possible,” said the company.
Commenting on the initiative, Sandeep Kataria, Chief Commercial Officer, Vodafone India, said:
We are delighted to partner with WhatsApp for enabling and educating our customers to be able chat in the language of their preference and hence be more at ease while chatting with their loved ones. We see it as a big step towards empowering the next one billion internet users. It is also in keeping with our philosophy of connecting for good. We believe that local language support is a clear area of focus for us, and we see this campaign with WhatsApp as a step in the right direction.
Neeraj Arora, Vice President at WhatsApp, said:
Together with Vodafone, we want to make communication more accessible and convenient in India.People can easily use WhatsApp in the Indian language of their choice to connect with friends and family anytime and anywhere. Language choice is an important feature for our users and we are happy to stand together with Vodafone on this education initiative that makes messaging on WhatsApp an even better experience.