Keypoint addressing the untapped app localization space in India

Sumit Goswami, 
CEO, 
Keypoint Technologies

What is the methodology you employ to localize a device user interface and the various Apps? What is the strength of your team?

Today localization is a big buzzword in the app development ecosystem, where we intend to reach out to our userbase with an ever-expanding language base which currently offers support in 100+global languages including 28 Indic languages. In our endeavour to truly localize a device user interface, we seek to go beyond just offering local languages but also intend to localize the entire user interface to provide an all-round smartphone experience to the user. Today with smartphones being offered at various price points, we seek to create a user experience which moves beyond just English or in some cases, Hindi. Our endeavour is to personalize the user experience taking it to the next level while making the offered content more local and user specific. It is thus that we intend to get deeper into the realms of applications on the smart device and localize the currently used application as per the user taste. This makes the user experience friendlier and user-centric as now a native Punjabi speaker or a Tamil speaker can look forward to a customized user experience on their devices, which is what we aim for through our innovative technologies.

KeyPoint Technologies has around 200 employees across various office locations in Glasgow, Scotland; Hyderabad, India; San Jose, USA; Shanghai, China and Tokyo, Japan. Headquartered at Glasgow which is also the headquarters for the linguistics division, KeyPoint Technologies employs a dedicated team of native linguists whose main objective is to expand the number of languages support on our apps. Our research and development center is located at Hyderabad, India along with sales and marketing offices at San Jose, USA; Shanghai, China and Tokyo, Japan.

Has the App ecosystem evolved completely in India? What is your say on it?

 I would say that the Indian app market is not yet completely evolved but is becoming more stable on a day-on-day basis. We feel that maturity is yet to come to this sector as there is a vast market of opportunities yet to be explored. The Indian app market is still dependant largely on international developers as the local app development ecosystem is yet to develop its potential.   

Given the diversity in languages in India and the smartphone market in India, there is a huge pool of opportunity for you to make avail of. What is the extent of success you have tasted in this market?

India is a culturally rich and diverse country boasting of varied socio-cultural setups enlivened by multiple languages and dialects which provide us with humongous opportunities for localized product development. This huge pool of opportunity in this diverse market is something which we are consciously aiming to address with our ever-growing kitty of local language dictionaries. In India the scope to add more languages in our expanding band of Indic languages is immense which is reflected by our base of dedicated 28 Indic languages out of the total 100 plus language bank.  

Today, our flagship product - Adaptxt is one of the most downloaded app in the country, and our aim is to create ‘Effortless Communication’ for our users with more engaged dictionary base covering major Indian languages which helps them to communicate in their native languages more freely and easily.

What kind of challenges are you faced with when talking of meeting the needs and demands of Indian smartphone users?

A major challenge that we are facing in terms of meeting the needs & demands of Indian smartphone users is the lack of knowledge about the need of app localization. Unfortunately, today both device manufacturers as well as app developers ignore this topic. Whenever the topic of seamless communication is brought up, device manufacturer will either talk about device performance or internet connectivity but they never talk about the lack of local content.

What are some of the recent strides KeyPoint has taken in the recent past in India?

KeyPoint Technologies has recently launched two revolutionary products -

Wink It - Wink It is India’s first emoticon and image prediction keyboard for smartphone users. The Wink It app makes communication interesting by predicting emoticons as users start typing the words and suggests multiple output options. It continuously learns user’s writing styles either through IM chatting or through email and predicts images based not only on word inputs but also on voice input recognition, single tap, multi-touch tap and Glide.

Adaptxt 3.0 - Adaptxt 3.0 (Beta) provides more accurate suggestions than any other keyboard in the market today. The most radical innovation to be introduced in the version 3.0 update is Location-Based Word Suggestion. Location-Based Word Suggestion is based on a smart AI which detects your current location to suggest relevant street names, landmarks, etc., and intelligently pin-points your location and suggests completed words to take forward the conversation.