It is no surprise that virtually every globally operating company is attempting to enter the Indian market. With a population of 1.2 billion, a rapidly expanding economy, and burgeoning programs in every field of technological research and development, India has emerged as the most lucrative and promising future market. For all of the potential rewards though, India also presents its share of obstacles that an aspiring investor must overcome in order to do successful business on the subcontinent. In addition to the typical requirements for market entry, such as capital and logistical needs, expansion into India also requires something that many companies are not prepared to handle – linguistic planning.
Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of equating India’s British colonial past with a semi-national fluency in English; in truth, only approximately 12% of the population of India uses English. Beyond English, companies wishing to conduct business in India may rely on the fact that the language of government is Hindi. However, while this may be important in scenarios involving litigation or government involvement/oversight, Hindi cannot solely be relied upon to conduct successful business in India.
As any successful business owner understands, the most important language is the language in which commerce is conducted and a company connects to the marketplace, its business partners and customers. For India, this supposedly simple task entails much more than communicating with partners in English and marketing your business in Hindi. India, in fact, has 22 officially recognized languages, each of which is written in a different script and posseses its own rules and intricacies. Beyond the number of the languages themselves, each language also features a myriad of local dialects, which when combined easily bring the number of Indian languages to more than over 2,000.
Some Numbers
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83 million people, mainly in and around Calcutta (the states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands), speak Bengali.
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For the area in and around Mumbai, which accounts for 13% of India’s GDP and 15% of its industrial output, the language is Marathi.
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The state of Karnataka, mainly known for its largest city, Bangalore (population of 9 million), features the highest overall and per capita GDP growth rate in India. The primary form of communication and official state language is Kannada, not Hindi.
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Tamil is one of the few surviving classical Indian languages and an official language of the Indian state Tamil Nadu – a region that heavily invests into information technology and features several IT parks.
Yes, these numbers are substantial, but in order to really give them some meaning, let’s put them into a business perspective. Suppose that your company was considering doing business in the state of Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad is the largest city of the state and home to 7 million inhabitants). All considerations had been made, capital acquired, distribution networks established, but your company is not prepared to conduct business in the languages that 92.5% of the population speak: Telugu and Urdu. Not only would this be a costly and debilitating setback for your company, but it would also mean missing an opportunity (for a limited or, potentially, extended period of time) to do business in a state that is, population-wise, larger than Germany. What company is willing to pass on the opportunity to reach more than 84 million potential customers?
To meet the needs of and exploit the opportunities that India’s unique market harbors, a company needs to make sure that they are meeting their associates and customers in their preferred language. Only that will allow your business to grow at the maximum rate. Many of these issues can be resolved by employing an experienced language service provider that is comfortable with Indian business documents, regulations, and contracts and can also assist you to design a marketing campaign tailored specifically to each of the regional Indian submarkets.
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