Vokal – India’s Largest Question Answer platform now in Telugu

~90% of India is vernacular and speaks a number of local languages while just 10% of the country is well versed in English. The vernacular audience is now getting access to smartphones and has been using the Internet. Naturally, the information available on the Internet favours English and is notably less in Indian vernacular languages.

As a step towards bridging this gap, Vokal, India’s largest vernacular Question Answer knowledge sharing platform, will be launching in Telugu on 29 May 2019 by its Founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka.

The smartest minds in the country answer questions of users. This gives unparalleled access to a common man to the best minds that have subject matter expertise. The platform invites experts in a particular subject matter to join the mission and help answer questions of millions of Indians. Vokal innovated by being the first Indian Question & Answer platform to enable audio & video answering.

The platform will also be made available in 10 other Indian languages. With this, Vokal will be enabling the users to ask queries and receive responses in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya and Assamese.

India’s vernacular internet segment is poised to be twice the size of the United States and one of the largest segments in the world. Very few companies have addressed the challenge of catering to this segment with relevant products. According to a study by KPMG and Google, regional language users are expected to account for nearly 75% of India’s internet user base by 2021. Vokal is trying to bridge the information and knowledge gap among these non-english internet users by enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing through questions and answers, over voice and video.

How Vokal works

Vernacular users use this platform to learn something new everyday from the best minds in the country. This knowledge sharing revolves around 100s of topics of interest. Users get to choose from 10+ interests and can follow creators around these interests. Users can ask questions that are answered in regional languages by volunteering experts on the platform.

Vokal is simple to use. Users ask a question – in their local Indian language, either through a voice message or text. This is then answered by an expert. Experts are vetted, verified and approved before they can start answering questions on the platform. So users know they get only the best, and the right answer. Experts can also conduct live video sessions and share their knowledge with a large audience, allowing for greater interaction and knowledge dissemination.

The platform has over 100,000s of questions, 1000s of experts & 2 million monthly users. Vokal aims to cater to 100 million monthly users within the next 18 months.

At the press conference, Mr. Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO, Vokal, said, “Anyone who doesn’t know English in India has a huge problem of accessing relevant answers to their questions. Their Internet experience is poor with a dearth of meaningful content. We’re building a peer-to-peer Q&A network that can cater to their information & knowledge needs. We are excited to open this platform to 10+ Indian languages including Telugu. Language diversity is unique to India. We look at this diversity as a reality and an opportunity. We’re happy to enable the platform to answer questions of the Telugu speaking population. We also invite bright minds from Telangana to contribute to the platform with their answers. “      

Adding to this, Mr. Mayank Bidawatka, Co-founder, Vokal said “Vokal has a unique solution for solving the knowledge and information needs of the vernacular market. We believe that these users will turn to value adding products like Vokal apart from the entertainment apps they use today. Our innovation lies in the Indianization of existing solutions and providing the easiest way for people to express themselves. We are on a mission to cater to 500 million vernacular internet users and we want to be one of the first few products that achieves this milestone. We are very excited to launch our Telugu version. We have seen tremendous response from celebrities, politicians and various other experts that have started using Vokal to communicate their thoughts.”

For more details, go to the Vokal website: https://getvokal.com

Comments

comments