WATConsult, the digital agency from the house of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India, under its market research division –Recogn, has unveiled its latest report on ‘Digital, Diverse & Multilingual India’. The report maps digital content consumption patterns of Indian users across local and regional languages. It also shares an in-depth analysis of the users’ preferences inside the Indian demography.

Over the past few years, internet usage behaviour has changed tremendously with more users accessing the internet in their respective languages. Also, whilst most Indians are well-versed in at least two languages, it is observed that they are more comfortable accessing information in their local dialects. Consequently, a variety of digital solutions along with mobile and internet applications have recently been introduced in several local languages to cater to such consumer demands.

This report, therefore, brings afore the digital content consumption patterns of these users across categories such as music, video streaming and short-and-long-format content, amongst others. For a deeper understanding of the audience, the report has further segmented them into categories like functional users, casual users, students, etc.

Below are the key findings of the report:

  1. By December 2020, WATConsult estimates that close to 70% of all internet users will access the internet in their local languages.
  2. A majority of Indians prefer watching content around Food, Entertainment and Education in their local language.
  3. Video content on Technology, Gadgets, Fashion and Sports are preferred to be consumed in English.
  4. 57% of audiences watch online videos several times a day. YouTube is the most used application to watch and consume online video content, followed by Hotstar and JioTV.
  5. There has been a great transition in the music streaming market with the advent of global players like Spotify, YouTube Music, and others. The audiences prefer listening to music in their local or regional languages because it builds an emotional connect.
  6. While browsing on social media platforms, more than one-fourth of the users like to consume content related to memes, videos, images, etc. in their local language.
  7. More than one-fourth of the users feel that the search results in their local language are inaccurate.
  8. 43% of the housewives feel that there are limited options to choose the language on online shopping websites. Lack of this local language feature does not result in a suitable experience that the customer is looking for.

Speaking on the report, Heeru Dingra, CEO, WATConsult said, “The report brings across a plethora of interesting data that can be further useful for stalwarts across industries. Since India is a diverse country with multiple languages and dialects, we believe that it is extremely important to approach consumers in the languages they prefer. While it is a mammoth challenge to process and train all the data for so many different languages, the insights presented in the report would benefit marketers significantly in chalking their way ahead.”