Amazon Highlights Alexa’s Popularity to Celebrate Three Years in India
Amazon is celebrating Alexa’s third anniversary in India by showcasing how popular the voice assistant is. The tech giant pulled together some notable numbers around Alexa ahead of a major 24-hour sale on Alexa-enabled devices in the country on Feb. 15. The stats show appreciation of Alexa in India continues to rise, with interactions up 67% in 2020, among other indicators.
India Loves Alexa
Amazon’s decision to celebrate Alexa’s place in India is not surprising, as the voice assistant is central to a lot of the company’s greater efforts in the country. Just five months ago, the company celebrated the first anniversary of Alexa learning Hindi, the introduction of Alexa to the country was always going to get its own celebration. Though it didn’t warrant a new video, Amazon did put together some charts to show off the voice assistant’s spread and people’s love for it in India. That isn’t just an abstract love, either. Amazon claimed that Indians told Alexa I love you 19,000 times a day, a 1,200% increase from 2019, with marriage proposals coming 6,000 times a day.
And as there are now more than 100 Alexa-enabled devices available, the demographics of who is using them has started to change. More than half of Echo owners live outside the main cities for the first time, fueling the 67% growth in overall use of the voice assistant over the last year, including 860,000 requests a day to manage any of the thousands of smart home devices that connect to Alexa.
“Be it the Echo device in the living room, 100+ Alexa built-in devices or your favourite smartphone, it is heart-warming to see users across the length and breadth of the country across age groups find value and adopt Alexa in their daily lives,” Amazon India’s Alexa lead Puneesh Kumar said in a statement. “For us it’s always Day 1 as we learn from our customers and continue to add new features, improving Alexa’s understanding on topics that matter to users locally.”
Amazon’s India
The anniversary of Alexa’s presence in India comes after a year of major new features and upgrades to the voice assistant in the country, especially a year after Amazon first added Hindi to Alexa’s languages. Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan is becoming a celebrity voice for Alexa in Hindi this year, which will likely help drive at least some sales. Mor crucially to Amazon’s core business was making it possible to use Alexa to browse the Amazon store app and ask the voice assistant to make utility bill payments. There’s a connection between Alexa and the core business that adds value to both, as Voicebot founder Bret Kinsella pointed out ahead of the Echo coming to India three years ago.
“Amazon has targeted India as a key smart speaker market,” Kinsella wrote. “It is an important market for its online retail offerings and selling more smart speakers can lead directly to more online sales through voice commerce.”
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