Gaana, India’s largest music broadcasting business, is now available to consumers in 9 Indian languages besides English, making the app more accessible for audiences outside Tier 1 cities. Gaana will now be accessible in Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Bhojpuri.
Gaana already allows users to filter music by their language preference, but the app interface has been in English only until now. With this update, new users will be prompted to select their preferred languages, and existing users change their language preferences in Settings. This feature is now live on Android, and will come to iPhone users soon.
Prashan Agarwal, COO, Gaana, said, “Gaana’s mission has always been to bring the best music experience to all of India. Gaana reaches over 25 million consumers, but is now finally usable for hundreds of millions of Indians who can’t read English. This is one of multiple initiatives by us to provide value to all Indians across India and the world.”
A report earlier this week in The Economic Times highlighted the growing importance of regional language applications in India, estimating that regional content apps will be a $1 billion market by 2020. It has also been a focus as part of PM Modi’s “Digital India” that products be built in native Indian languages.