Google launches Navlekhā for Indian Language Publishers

Indian Language Internet Users to Reach 536 Million by 2021

Google has launched a platform for Indian language publishers to digitise their content, at the annual Google for India event held in New Delhi today. This initiative is called Navlekhā, a word derived from Sanskrit meaning “a new way to write.” The initiative is expected to make it easy for print publishers to create mobile-friendly web content.

“Majority of internet users in India today are Indian language users, and this number is expected to reach 500 million in the next two years. Smartphones are not useful unless they work in people’s primary language and provide access to great content in their native tongues. To that goal, we are working with Indian language publishers to bring more relevant content online. Right now, the amount of online content in Indian languages is only 1 percent of what’s available in English,” said Rajan Anandan, VP, India and SEA Sales and Operations, Google.

Google launches Navlekhā initiative for Indian Language Publications

The platform provides Indian language publishers with free web hosting with AdSense support, so they can immediately start monetizing their content. Publishers will also receive training and support, and a branded .page domain for the first three years. Navlekhā has already started onboarding publishers from Delhi, and aims to add many more from other regions in September.

Publishers can register at the Navlekhā site, following which a team from Google will review the application and later help set up the free publication website from existing scanned PDF files. The Navlekhā project comprises a tool that uses AI to render any PDF containing Indian language content into editable text. Google has created a sample publication page.

Announcements at Google for India

Google is expanding the number of languages supported in its existing apps and services. The Search feed will now display personalised news from both English and Hindi sources, using AI. The Google Assistant will support Marathi (with seven more Indian languages coming soon) and more Indian apps — like Where Is My Train, Airtel, and Hello English — can be accessed through voice control.

Google Maps Go now has turn-by-turn navigation functionality. It is expected to deliver better guidance to public transport riders, informing them of upcoming stops and sending alerts when it’s time to get off. Google’s partnership with RedBus — an Indian inter-city bus ticketing service — will enable the addition of more than 20,000 inter-city bus routes in 1,500 cities to Google Maps.

In order to take Google Tez beyond India, the company will be unifying all of Google’s payment offerings globally. Tez will now be called Google Pay. “We believe that many of the innovations and features we have pioneered with Tez will work in other countries. In the coming weeks, we’ll be making Google Pay even more useful by increasing the number of places you can use it in, expanding services for merchants, and working with banks to provide instant loans to Google Pay users,” said Rajan Anandan.

Since launching its India-first payments app Tez last September, over 22 million people and businesses have used Tez to make over 750 million transactions that are collectively worth over $30 billion annually.

Google Station is partnering Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Limited to cover over 12,000 villages, towns and cities in the state of Andhra Pradesh, potentially reaching 10 million people. This will provide high-quality internet access to areas that have never been connected before, from hospitals to villages.

Google’s Indian hardware partners on Android such as Micromax, Lava, Nokia and Transsion are creating Android (Go edition) phones at lower prices. Early next month Samsung will launch its first ever Android (Go edition) device, the Galaxy J2 Core.

The company also launched a new feature in Google Go that lets you listen to webpages. Powered by natural language processing and speech synthesis AI, this technology can read billions of webpages smoothly in a natural sounding voice. It supports 28 languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil — even on 2G connections.

In response to the recent Kerala and Karnataka floods, Google’s Crisis Response team turned on SOS alerts on Google Search in English and Malayalam, and activated Person Finder to help people search for family and friends. Locations of flood relief resources like shelters are being shared on Google Maps. Outside of the tech support, Google.org and Googlers are contributing over $1 million to support relief and recovery efforts.

“Around 40 million new users come online in India every year, and not just from metropolitan centers, but increasingly from rural areas as well. And they’re no longer predominantly men: in the next three years, we expect 45 percent of internet users in India to be women,” the company said in a statement.