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English Vinglish: Paytm to woo small towns in 6 local languages
NEW DELHI: Paytm will adopt six regional languages on Wednesday, making it easier for its sellers to upload, advertise and sell goods on the platform.
NEW DELHI: Paytm will adopt six regional languages on Wednesday, making it easier for its sellers to upload, advertise and sell goods on the platform.
For the first time, sellers can choose from Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada.
This comes at a time when companies such as Google have talked about wider acceptance of the Internet through Indic languages. Paytm has 130,000 merchants and 130 million users. According to Assocham, sales worth ₹25,000 crore will take place through e-commerce.
Paytm’s internal research showed many, particularly in small towns, did not sell online since they didn’t understand English.
About 40% of Paytm’s sellers are not from the top 20 cities. The Indic languages cover 75-80% sellers.
Paytm vice-president Saurabh Vashishtha said sellers would limit their activity on Paytm to uploading the product since it was in English.
Many would sign up but not use the application. In some cases, they would not even use tools to improve sales, or to advertise.
Vashishtha said the entire seller panel would now be available in the language of the seller’s choice.
“And it is not merely a translation from English to another language ... it won’t have technical terms,” he said.
For now, the Indic languages are only available for sellers. “That is something we are working on,” Vashishtha said.
