Google has been trying to scale up its presence in India's digital landscape with multiple India-specific innovations and investments. The latest of which involves Google Assistant helping book Covid-19 vaccine slots in Indian languages and degradation to their translation feature.
Tech giant Google announced on Thursday that its payment app, GooglePay, would soon be enabled with the 'Hinglish' language option. The dialect refers to a conversational hybrid of Hindi and English. As per the tech giant, this is an attempt to make interactions on the app more "intuitive and natural".
The payments app would also be introducing Bill Split. As the name suggests, users would be split and share their expenses using the app.
Additionally, the payment app would soon be enabled with a speech-to-text feature. The user would be able to make payments via voice commands in Hindi or English. "They can voice account numbers in Hindi or English into the app to enter the account number, which is then confirmed with the sender before initiating the payment," the tech giant's blog informed.
Without disclosing a specific timeline, Google said the features would go live in the coming months.
At the 7th edition of the Google For India event, the tech giant unveiled a host of India-specific innovations to their existing products.
COVID-19 vaccine registration in local language
Google would soon be rolling out a pilot project to facilitate booking a vaccine slot via the CoWin platform using Google Assistant. The feature would be available in English, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil And Telugu. It is expected to roll out in early 2022.
Enhancement to the translation feature
The North America-based tech company's translation feature would be upscaled and would translate high-quality web content to local languages. Users would be able to view the content in their local language from content that could be originally in any other alternate language. The feature would be initially made available in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.
The tech giant has been working intensely to spurt up its presence in the Indian market with multiple India-specific innovations. The company had announced a $10 billion Google For India Digitization Fund, last year. On the basis of this, the company collaborated with telecom operators RelianceJio to manufacture the affordable indigenously-made JioPhone Next.