India has a population of over a billion with an overall literacy rate of more than 76%, however, English literacy is rate is below 10%. Thus more than 60% of the population is literate and reads or watches regional content. With the digital revolution in the country, there is a demand and a big market for content in regional languages even if it is information displayed at airports or railway stations.
Reverie, a Bangalore-based company, is a market leader in providing regional language solutions for digital platforms. Be it text display, text input or content processing for a mobile phone, mobile app or mobile content or on the web, Reverie provides solutions for the entire ecosystem which comprise of device OEMs, app developers and content providers.
A popular cricket quiz app which runs on Reverie’s language platform saw 15% of its total user base playing the game in Hindi with the launch of the multi-lingual service. The user engagement or the session time with the same app has gone up by 45%. A popular entertainment app saw an increase of 10% in their user base M-o-M with local language feature launched. And in 3 months, the app company has acquired 2 million new users. Vikram Venkateswaran speaks to Arvind Pani, Co-founder and CEO, Reverie on its growth and the path it has taken to fulfill the Indian user’s need for multilingual internet.
Q. Please give a brief description about your company.
Arvind Pani: Reverie builds and operates a cloud-based, language-as-a-service platform, Reverie Language Gateway. This helps organizations create multilingual parallels of their mobile apps, web portals, and content in real-time. Reverie’s customers include consumer Internet companies (including online retailers, messaging applications, marketplaces), banks and financial service providers, media and publishing companies, governments, OEMs, chipset manufacturers, independent app developers, and retail consumers.
Through the Reverie Language Gateway, Reverie’s customers can offer the entire local language experience – display, input, and search to their customers giving them a complete browse-to-transact experience in the language of their choice – all in real-time.
Q. Can you trace the origin of the idea that eventually turned into your venture?
AP: Even while working in MNC companies like Intel, I always wanted to start my own venture and around 2000 when I saw the influx of mobile phones in the market, I realised sooner or later local language featured phones will be a necessity for companies to reach a larger audience. I discussed the business idea with my sibling Vivekanand Pani but both of us realised that it was too early to launch a business with a focus on languages as at that time, mobile phone was a luxury and those who could afford could surely speak and write English. So we waited.
By 2009, things had changed drastically as the no. of smart-phones users were increasing and data tariff plans were being reduced. At that time, it was clear that handset makers and even app developers will have to go multi-lingual to stay relevant to their end-users. Vivek was working with C-DAC at the time and he roped in S K Mohanty, his colleague, who was heading the local language computing division at C-DAC. Together, we started Reverie Language Technologies in 2009.
Q. Where and when did the ideas and the team click together to form a concrete vision forward?
AP: Vivek is an expert on algorithms required for our platform to function smoothly while Mohanty is explosive with fonts design, its nuances and focus on user experience. Between both my co-founders, they have work experience of more than 40 years. Thus, we got our founding team right and hired some more talented people who were mentored directly by us.
Q. Do you feel that you have finally entered your ‘zone’ of work / specialisation? Is this in tune with what you have been doing so far? Or did you discover these skills and aptitudes per chance?
AP: The space Reverie is in today is definitely in line with our vision to make local language as popular English in the digital ecosystem. Today, we are working with top-of-the-line companies from sectors like BFSI, entertainment, media and publishing, smart-phones, app developers, chipset makers and many more. However, we are confident that the best is yet to come. We would like every Indian user to have the freedom to use local language on their digital devices in a way that it enhances their experience with the device. I’m proud to share that slowly but steadily we are getting there.
Q. Externally, what was the need/opening that you sought to fill or fulfill in the market?
The Need: The key need was to create an Internet, complete with all apps and services that are made available on it, to a large section of the globe in their own language. Consider India, where out of a total of 950 million literates in India, only 150 million people are literate in English. However 56% of all content on the Web is in English. This means that the Web and mobile-based services are almost unusable by 800 million Indians. The only way to do it was to create a local language Internet – an Internet that offered apps and services in local languages.
Reverie’s enterprise clients want to communicate with customers in local languages. They intend to give these customers a complete browse-to-transact experience on apps and portals, in their own language. Earlier the entire localization process was manual, costly, and laden with challenges from the very basic (non-existent display and input technologies across devices) to the very complex (local language and cross-language search, communication in colloquial terms).
How Reverie Addressed the Need: Reverie’s technologies and approach – language-as-a-service on a scalable and secure, cloud-based infrastructure – solves these challenges in a cost-effective, pay-as-you-grow model. Localization takes place in real-time and runs on Reverie’s massively scaled and secure cloud infrastructure. Integration efforts are minimal and customers simply call the Reverie Language Gateway. Our APIs do the rest – language and content conversion, search, display, input, and analytics for localization impact.
Benefit: Companies can get their multilingual businesses up and running in about 8 weeks, making it the fastest time-to-market for any localization service.
Q. What kind of research/thinking did you have to put in before deciding to execute the plan.
AP: We believed that language localization shall be a revenue driver for businesses. Our technologies are present in over 300 million devices worldwide. However, for entire apps and services to be delivered to their consumers in local languages, an approach much broader than creating language technologies was required.
Scale was essential as we were aiming to help localize some of the world’s largest applications in the consumer Internet space, robust banking applications, government portals, media and publishing portals, and a lot more – all running simultaneously on our own infrastructure. And now, with content being published and seen in local languages, it needed to be searchable and discoverable. With no search and discovery technologies for local languages, we built our own from scratch.
Q. In a sentence, what is your offering to your customer?
AP: We have a cloud-based language platform which helps business launch their offerings to their end users in multiple languages. Recently, our platform has powered HDFC Securities’ trading app in 11 languages. With this, HDFC Securities has become India’s 1st trading company to give end-to-end services in multiple languages. The app currently available on Android platforms has been downloaded nearly 50,000 times. The no. of users are currently at par with English users of the app but our expectation is that this number will race ahead.
Q. What were the challenges you faced between idea and execution?
AP: When we started approaching prospective clients, their initial reaction was surprise. They said, “Do we really need a service like this?” They believed most of their users were happy using English because it’s an aspirational language and they associated local language feature with Bottom-of-the-Pyramid users and hence questioned our idea behind powering expensive smartphones. It took us a fair amount of time to spread awareness about the need for such a service and its direct impact on the business growth. Our efforts have finally paid off. Earlier, it used to take anywhere between 9-12 months to close a deal with a prospective client. The same time period has now come down to 1-3 months on an average.
Q.What would you say are the core values of your start-up?
AP: A delightful user experience is at the heart of everything we do. Our products are designed not on technology but how a user would like to use at their end. We believe that technology should be used as an enabler and a product should be designed keeping in mind the user experience.
Q. What are the differentiators of the brand / persona / product that you offer?
AP: Reverie believes in 3 key fundamentals: (1) Language localization is a major top-line enhancer. (2) A user’s digital experience in local languages should be equal to that in English, for all services. (3) People are ready to consume accurately localized Internet-enabled services in their own languages – it is a market waiting to be explored right now. Our technologies and delivery approach address these fundamentals completely. Reverie’s differentiators are our cloud-based language-as-a-service platform that gives customers a pay-as-you-grow model to work with, and our promise to give end-users, complete language experience of the highest quality. We are the only company in the country to offer end-to-end services as far as language enablement on devices is concerned.
Q. What is your game-plan for the future, say over the next 5 years?
AP: We plan to continue penetrating the Indian market to enable as many businesses as possible to go multilingual. However, among big focus areas for us this year would be the government vertical. The governments both at Central and State level are rolling out many citizen facing initiatives. These initiatives will be successful if they have local language capabilities as both citizen and even government employees are more fluent in their local language. Apart from government, consumer internet companies and payment gateway companies will also be our focus. The idea is to provide an end-to-end support in our languages to enable more users to get online. We are also looking to expand our base overseas in markets like Southeast Asia and West Asia.
Q. Can you speak about your support systems, investment backers, financial supporters?
AP: We readied our first prototype in 2011 and entered in Q-Prize the same year. Q-Prize is a contest organised by Qualcomm worldwide, to showcase some of the best and innovative technology work. Reverie won the India chapter of the contest and our prize money of $1,00,000 helped us to take our product to the market. With that, we also became a Qualcomm Ventures portfolio company. Presently though we are bootstrapped but profitable for the last 2 years.
Q. From inception up to the present, what, according to you would be the highlights of the road travelled thus far?
AP: The biggest highlight has been that we have created a whole new business category – that of delivering complete local language experience for apps and portals, as-a-service on a cloud platform. This has removed language localization from the realm of being a cost and a manual process to a real-time, dynamic, revenue generator. Our approach serves to more than double addressable markets almost instantly. This has brought a new level of inclusivity on the Internet. Reverie is all set to usher in an era of language equality across the globe.
Q. Where are you based? Why did you choose this location to set up your company?
AP: We are based in Bengaluru and have a presence in Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, and San Francisco. Our Bengaluru headquarters houses the research, development, and engineering teams. The chief reason to set up shop in Bengaluru has been the city’s reputation to attract some of the best talent with the right skill sets and an attitude to build at scale and make a huge difference to the world.