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India’s think tank NITI Aayog is now developing a device akin to Amazon Virtual Assistant device Alexa for the countrymen.
This is where NITI Aayog sees a huge opportunity for the Indian own virtual assistant device which is available in local languages.
India’s think tank NITI Aayog is now developing a device akin to Amazon Virtual Assistant device Alexa for the countrymen.
The idea is to have NLP driven conversational bots in the future reaching all the corners of the country in multiple languages, said the officials in a report.
The device name is yet to be decided will going to offer services such as music playback, to do lists, streaming podcasts, providing real-time information such as the weather, news, sports resorts and traffic, and music playback.
The device will now aim to reach to regional users and be capable of handling queries in 18 languages.
NITI Aayog has also collaborated with the IIT Patna to develop an NLP for commercial use. The premier engineering institute is doing market research for a suitable product. More than 15institutes would going to participate in the development programme.
The director of the IIT-Patna, Pushpak Bhattacharya talking about the impact said that the technology would now touch everything from an ecommerce firm to the educational institute which uses chatbots.
It has a huge potential as business prospects for corporates. The project will now be funded by the government. It might be acquired by big corporates after that.
At present, in virtual assistance segment Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s HomePod and Google’s Home are popular devices. All of them are globally available in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish but have very low penetration when it comes to having a reach in regional languages in India.
In India, the regional languages users have grown at more than 50 percent in the last seven years. They are expected to grow and touch to more than 530 million in the next three years. Moreover, English is expected to reach only 199 million by that period.
This is where NITI Aayog sees a huge opportunity for the Indian own virtual assistant device which is available in local languages.
