VODAFONE AND WHATSAPP TO EMPOWER CUSTOMERS TO CHAT IN LANGUAGE OF THEIR CHOICE

- One of the top telecom operators to promote and educate customers about the local language feature
- Rolls out an animated step-by-step approach to handhold customers

Chandigarh, July 3, 2017: Vodafone India, one of India’s leading telecommunications service providers, together with WhatsApp is happy to promote and educate millions of users to use the app in local India languages. Vodafone is one of the first operators to start such an initiative and aims to empower its consumers to connect with each other in a language of their preference.

Today, WhatsApp is available in more than 50 different languages around the world. The app currently has over 200 million monthly active users in India, using 10 Indian languages.

To drive the adoption of the newly introduced local language feature on WhatsApp, Vodafone has built customized pages in various Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil among others). The interface on the page is built with an animated step-by-step approach displaying the option of changing to different Indian languages while chatting. This makes setting up the local language option for WhatsApp on Vodafone a simple matter of a few clicks. Updating status, chatting or even sharing messages in the language of the customer’s choice is possible. With a simple click, consumers can even install WhatsApp.

Announcing the initiative, Sandeep Kataria, Chief Commercial Officer, Vodafone India, said, ‘We are delighted to partner with WhatsApp for enabling and educating our customers to be able chat in the language of their preference and hence be more at ease while chatting with their loved ones. We see it as a big step towards empowering the next one billion internet users. It is also in keeping with our philosophy of connecting for good. We believe that local language support is a clear area of focus for us, and we see this campaign with WhatsApp as a step in the right direction.’

“Together with Vodafone, we want to make communication more accessible and convenient in India,” says Neeraj Arora, Vice President at WhatsApp. “People can easily use WhatsApp in the Indian language of their choice to connect with friends and family anytime and anywhere. Language choice is an important feature for our users and we are happy to stand together with Vodafone on this education initiative that makes messaging on WhatsApp an even better experience.”