Flipkart, India’s e-commerce site, announced the introduction of Voice Search on its platform. It means now users can search from a pool of over 150 million products across 80+ categories through speech. The voice search option will enable better adaptation of small-town people to online marketing platforms. Currently, Flipkart has given Hindi and English language voice search.

In a blog, Flipkart mentioned that, With more than 75% of internet users in India coming from non-English speaking backgrounds and a majority of them residing in non-urban, rural areas, it becomes imperative to solve the language barrier for enabling access to the benefits of the internet, including e-commerce. According to a joint study conducted by Bain & Company and Flipkart in 2020, online shoppers in tier-2 cities make up nearly half of all shoppers and contribute to three out of every five orders for leading e-retail platforms.

The Voice Search will help users search through the product catalog using colloquial commands such as “काला जूता दिखाना”, “सब्जी कIटने वाला देना” etc. makes it easy to shop for new-to-internet users. Also, searching through voice is both natural and quicker as it is 3x faster than typing in English and 5x faster in Hindi.

Voice search, along with some of the other initiatives by Flipkart, will make the digital commerce experience more convenient, accessible, and seamless for the new wave of online shoppers.” said Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Flipkart.