Amazon India brings Hindi support to mobile website, Android devices
New Delhi, Sep 4 : As more and more Indians begin shopping online via smartphones in tier II and III cities, Amazon India on Tuesday launched a Hindi version of its mobile website and app for Android devices, aiming to bring the next 100 million customers online.
At the moment, only the mobile website and app on Android -- not the desktop version -- have Hindi support.
The Hindi version of 'Amazon.in' on mobile phones will enable shoppers read product information, find deals and discounts, place the orders, pay for their orders, manage their account information, track their orders and view order history in Hindi.
"Launch of the Hindi shopping experience is a significant step towards bringing the next 100 million customers online," Amazon India Vice President (Category Management) Manish Tiwary said in a statement.
"This first Indian language launch will enable crores of Hindi-preferring customers across India to shop in their preferred language," Tiwary added.
Customers opting for the Hindi shopping experience can select their language option from the menu in the top left corner on their smartphones.
They will always have the choice to change their language preference any time, the US-based online retailer said.
However, customers will continue to have the search feature in English and will also need to enter delivery addresses in English.
"The upcoming festival season is a great time for new customers to come online to fulfil their shopping needs - now for the first time customers can do their Diwali shopping in Hindi!" Tiwary said.
The team will continue to evolve the experience to add more shopping features like product reviews, ratings, questions and answers available in Hindi over the next few months, Amazon India said in the statement.
"Getting Indian languages right in a shopping context is hard but an interesting opportunity," said Kishore Thota, Amazon India Director (Customer Experience and Marketing).
"We combined both human effort to craft the right experience and artificial intelligence to scale this experience across the vast selection available at Amazon. We are just getting started, look to learning and getting better," he added.
The Amazon team, consisting of language experts and translators, chose commonly used terms over perfectly translated words to make the shopping experience easily understandable and seamless for Hindi customers.
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Rupee falls 9 paise to record low of 90.87 against US dollar in early trade
Mumbai (PTI): The rupee plunged 9 paise to a record low of 90.87 against the US dollar in early trade on Tuesday, weighed down by sustained FII outflows and no breakthrough in the India-US trade deal.
However, a weaker greenback and a decline in global crude oil prices capped further losses in the domestic unit, according to forex traders.
At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at its all-time low of 90.87 against the US dollar, down 9 paise from its previous close, and traded in a narrow range of 90.77- 90.87 in early trade.
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The rupee on Monday settled at a new all-time low of 90.78 against the US dollar, registering a loss of 29 paise over its previous close, weighed down by uncertainty over an India-US trade deal and persistent foreign fund outflows.
"The US-India trade deal still seems to be off by a distance with the Commerce Secretary saying the first phase will be signed before the end of the year and news that we are closest to the deal being signed. The uncertainty has clouded the recovery on the USD/INR pair as the rupee opened lower with dollar buying happening every day," Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury and Executive Director, Finrex Treasury Advisors LLP, said.
Even a reduction in trade deficit on Monday could not bring about a recovery in the rupee with Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) outflows continuing, he added
According to the latest government data released on Monday, India's trade deficit narrowed to a five-month low of USD 24.53 billion in November, as exports rebounded by 19.37 per cent to a six-month high of USD 38.13 billion after contracting in October, driven by higher shipments of engineering and electronics goods.
At the same time, the country's imports dipped by 1.88 per cent to USD 62.66 billion due to a fall in the inbound shipments of gold, crude oil, coal, and coke.
FIIs sold equities worth Rs 1,468.32 crore on Monday, according to exchange data.
Also, wholesale price inflation stayed in the negative for the second consecutive month in November at (-) 0.32 per cent, even though there was an uptick in prices of food articles like pulses and vegetables on a month-on-month basis, government data showed on Monday.
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation was at (-) 1.21 per cent in October and 2.16 per cent in November last year.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.03 per cent lower at 98.27.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 0.61 per cent lower at USD 60.19 per barrel in futures trade.
On the domestic equity market front, the 30-share benchmark index, Sensex, declined 363.92 points to 84,849.44 in early trade while the Nifty was down 106.65 points to 25,920.65.
