BANGALORE, India — Only 10 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people know English. Yet most of the country’s e-commerce services have been offered only in English, closing off online shopping to the vast majority of people here.

Now Amazon is aiming to break through that language barrier. The e-commerce giant on Tuesday offered a hearty “namaste” to this country’s half a billion Hindi speakers by making its local website and apps available in India’s most popular language. Users of the India site or app will be able to choose Hindi as their preferred language, much as American users can choose Spanish.

Amazon’s expansion into Hindi — its first foray into an Indian language, even as other companies have tried that strategy and pulled back — is vital to the company’s ambition of making India its next big market.