This startup helps online businesses smash one of their biggest barriers in Asia

Here are two telling stats: less than 15 percent of the 300 million internet users in India are shopping online; and less than 15 percent of Indians are proficient in English. Put the two together, and you get one of the biggest barriers for internet and mobile businesses in India: language.

Bangalore-based startup Reverie claims to have the key to crossing that barrier: an application programming interface (API) that an app or portal can plug in to deliver its content in over 50 languages.

Co-founder Arvind Pani prefers to use the word “localization” for what Reverie does, and not “translation.” He explains why to Tech in Asia:

If you take the word ‘play,’ it would have different renderings in different contexts in Hindi. In sports it would be ‘khelna;’ in music, it would become ‘bajana;’ and in the context of a brand like John Players, it would have to remain John Players, and cannot become ‘John Khiladiyan’ (players translates to ‘khiladiyan’ in Hindi).

Not just a translator

The core team of Reverie

Pani says Reverie APIs have domain intelligence built into them, so that the “localization” is meaningful. For example, native speakers of Hindi routinely use words like “mobile” without translating them into Hindi. So the Reverie API would convert the phrase “mobile and tablet” into “mobile aur tablet” as native speakers would do, translating only the conjunction. Thus, semantics, natural language processing, and an understanding of local contexts become important to ensure that the conversion of content into local languages doesn’t turn into gibberish.

It’s the intelligent contextualization, claims Pani, which sets Reverie apart from others trying to break the language barriers in India, like Process9 and LinguaNext. Besides, the cloud-based Reverie Language Gateway is more than a translator: it enables content creation, search, and analytics in local languages.

For example, it supports a local language search even if the backend is in English. So, if a user types in the word “jootha” (which means “shoes” in Hindi), she would still discover all the shoes on the portal. It also supports content creation or messaging in local languages with a keyboard app called Swalekh which supports a number of Indian languages.

Local language user analytics

Another key component of Reverie that can provide business value to ecommerce sites and mobile apps is user behavior analytics. “How do you understand the consumers who are using various applications and segments of business in local languages? Our platform can provide data to businesses to help them make better decisions around that,” says Pani.

Southeast Asia on the horizon