At 1.4 billion citizens and counting, India is becoming a key focus, if it’s not already, for almost every social platform. It’s fast rate of population growth and rapid adoption of technology have made India the leading region, in terms of total users, for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Clubhouse.

Though not yet on the top list, LinkedIn is seeing a big rise in Indian usage. In their updated user map, India has become LinkedIn’s second largest user market, falling just a little short of US users. With India becoming more of a focus, LinkedIn has just announced its first Indian Regional Language Support, with Hindi now supported in the app.

LinkedIn explains:

“You will now be able to create your LinkedIn profile in Hindi, making it easier for other Hindi-speaking members and recruiters to find you for relevant opportunities. You can also access the feed, jobs, messaging, and create content in Hindi.”

Better Understanding

India is a land of many languages, with Hindi being the most commonly spoken one across the entire region. LinkedIn is also set on optimal take-up, meaning that it’ll eventually work on the various other dialects, too, in order to really build its presence in the country. Which is a wise move, considering that LinkedIn has recently lost its foothold in China.

To better align with its new Hindi language support, LinkedIn states that it’ll also be expanding its range of job opportunities for Hindi-speaking professionals across various industries, “including banking and government jobs”, as part of its broader efforts to establish itself as a key market facilitator, thus opening up more opportunities for ad revenue and usage.

With its sheer potential user base, India really is an ideal target market for any social platform that wants to gain significant traction and momentum from the get go. Really, the only major social media platforms that failed to gain significant traction with Indian users are Twitter and Pinterest, while the region was also once TikTok’s largest market until it was banned by the Indian Government because of a border dispute with China.

It’s highly likely that Indian users will be a main market focus of many social platforms for quite some time, and you should expect to see interests continue to rise over the next couple of years as more tests and features are released to the region.

The Wrap

Perhaps the most interesting thing to note here is the shift – US users are more accustomed to the latest updates and features being more relevant to their personal usage and interests, as well as being more in-tune with local trends . This focus on an Indian market, however, is more likely to bring in more elements that are better valued by Eastern markets than they would be in Western ones.

So the next time you encounter news or an actual update within one of the apps that you regularly use that doesn’t really make sense, take a step back and consider where exactly it could be of value. Some tools are actually meant to do more than they appear.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3IlJXqz