With the boom of Vernacular platforms in India, the internet ecosystem has seen buzz among both the startups as well as investors. In recent years, the word 'Vernacular' has been very fashionable as it is being used to describe everyday language.

When we talk about reaching the potential target audience, a business must keep a watch on the competitive market and audience behavior. No business wants to stay in one place, they all must follow the drift to engage their audience. Similarly, the increase in regional language content has led to an increase in the scale of the number of users, resulting in startups to transitioning from traditional media to online media.

In comparison to English-speaking Internet users, non-English Internet users are growing at a faster rate. According to Redseer Consulting, in a year the regional language users have seen an increase of 13 percent, while English language users have shown only 1 percent.

Vernacular User Growth
With the Internet becoming an essential part of life and smartphones being cheaper, the demand for Internet products has increased more than before and is used even outside metro cities, who also prefer to speak regional languages. In the past decade, Internet companies have solved urban problems, such as cab service, food delivery, online shopping, home services, etc. These are some of the examples of Indian problems whose needs are being acknowledged by startups.

According to reports by KPMG and Google, “Indian Languages — Defining India’s Internet”, in 2016 there were 234 million Indian-language internet users and 175 million English users. By 2021, the gap between the two groups is expected to widen. Users of Indian languages are expected to double to 536 million, while English users will

only increase to 199 million. The report stated that between 2016 and 2021, nine out of 10 new+ internet users will use local languages.

The rural mass of India offers a growing base for vernacular or regional language-focused internet companies owing to the rural internet users which are 24% (2015-2018) against the 21% growth rate of urban internet users. The key factors aiding in this boom are smartphones and cheaper data costs.

Internet User Growth
It took 15 years from 1995 to 2010 before 100 million Indians (8% of the population) had access to the Internet but then it grew very fast, surpassing the estimated 500 million users by June 2018, more than 30% of the population, have shown tremendous growth in Internet usage primarily by the mobile-powered. In present, trends in the online industry are characterized by an increase in rural users and increased consumption of regional language content.

The increasing smartphone and internet penetration are enabling more startups across geographies to create regional language content. This can be traced with the help of the fact jotted down by the KPMG report which brings to light that 62% (328 minutes/week) of the 530 minutes spent online by Indian users with Indian languages are engaged on these applications.

Even one report stated that compared to other media such as TV, print, and radio, vernacular language users are spending 56% of their time on the Internet, especially on smartphones. Therefore, one who has been paying attention to the development of the Internet in India behold no surprise in the success of regional language content and services.

Regional Content
With the internet robustly making its way into tier II and III cities, it offers a huge market for digital content consumption in the local language. Coming with an entourage of a large number of population, digital marketers have great growth potential if they stay motivated to reach out to a large set of audiences. Being present on the localized platform can garner them higher traction. This will attract the masses who do not wish to go beyond their comfort level of the local language.

In addition to this social media marketing, a part of digital marketing not just paves way for the brands to reach their customers, but in addition to this provides a medium for bidirectional conversation where they can also listen to the concerns of the target audience/ customers. India is a country having great diversity, opening space for new insights every 100 km and vernacular languages offer great scope for digital content. As per the KPMG report, 70% of Indians prefer digital content in their local language where 88% of Indians are susceptible to respond to digital advertisement not in English but in their mother tongue.

This is the need of the hour for a country like India, to communicate with a population of 1.3 billion who belong to different ethnic groups. Going Vernacular is the only way to connect with desired users.