Duolingo comes to India with English modules for Hindi speakers

Duolingo, the popular learning app, has launched in India with a new update that brings localised content to the familiar app.   The year-old app already has about 1.5 lakh Indians learning various languages including Spanish, French and German, and it will now help Hindi speaking users learn English. It has also bagged the title of iTunes’ iPhone app of the year.     Founded in 2013, the Pittsburgh-based US company has around 28 million users across the world with English and Spanish being the most popular languages among app users, reports The Economic Times. Besides, it also brings support for other non-Roman scripts such as Chinese and Japanese. “It took this long because we were not ready for non-Roman script. But now we are,” said Luis von Ahn, chief executive of Duolingo and associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.   Von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo told IBTimes, “We expect a relatively high adoption (rate) in India. However it’s a completely new market for us and nobody at Duolingo speaks Hindi. As such we will work with our users and contributors to help make the course better, day by day. We also don’t do any paid advertising, so the only way we will become popular is if people like the platform so much they tell their friends. This has been the case in other places, and how we reached 28 million users, and we hope it is the case in India as well.”   The company reportedly does not employ translators or experts and is completely crowd-sourced. It says it often gets requests to learn meme-based Internet languages like Lolcat and Pirate English.   Duolingo’s biggest markets are Europe and Latin America, but India has a sizeable user base. Without ads to rely on for revenue, Duolingo has created a monetisation model that allows learners to translate real-world documents while they learn using the app. Last year, the company had reportedly partnered with CNN and BuzzFeed to use its translations.   With the growing number of Indian phone users, a dedicated app with domestic content seems to be just the right move. Duolingos’ gamified approach to learning new languages makes it fun to use and is certainly never bookish or classroom-like. Android and iOS users can download Duolingo from  Google Play Store and Apple App Store, respectively.