Zacharias

BANGALORE, India — Yahoo! Inc. has initiated a new chat service in India that for the first time will allow the nation's fast-growing population of Internet users to exchange messages in one of several Indian languages.

Launched over the Diwali weekend, the Indichat plug-in lets computer users to message one another Hindi, Kannada and Tamil without the need for a special language keyboard. The individual simply loads a "side panel" plug-in and begins chatting.

Yahoo offers additional downloadable plug-ins that can be used to chat in other Indian languages including Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam.

The development reflects the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Internet giant's desire expand its services in India, a nation that boasts nearly two dozen regional languages and hundreds of dialects.

"English is the preferred language of roughly 30 to 40 million people in India, but it's just one language in a very populous nation," said George Zacharias, managing director of Yahoo! India. "Though many Indians are familiar with English, 60 million of them are far more comfortable with the language that is spoken in their mother town."

"The Internet is still young in India, but it is growing very fast," he added. "As the 'Net continues to evolve there, we expect to see people beyond those who are familiar with English come online. We want to be able to serve them as best as we can, and this is one way we can do that."

Yahoo! India is the Bangalore-headquartered Indian regional business unit of Yahoo! Inc.

An estimated 70 million to 80 million Indians speak English but not Hindi, according to www.India.gov.in, the Indian government's national online portal. But Hindi is India's official national language and the primary tongue of 20 percent of the country's 1.1 billion-strong population. English retains associate status but is considered the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication. The Constitution of India recognizes 22 other national languages and 844 different dialects that are spoken in various parts of the country.

Despite possessing the world's second-largest population, India claims just 37 million Internet users (about 4 percent of its total citizenry). Yet that figure represents a 54 percent leap from 2004, according to the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, and all signs point to continued growth.

The trade group also projects the number of Indians with access to a personal computer will surge from just 2 percent of the population to 54 million by 2008. By contrast, 60 percent of the combined population of the planet's developed nations have access to computers.

"Over the next few years we expect the Internet's penetration to reach 20 percent of the Indian population," Zacharias said. "It's fair to estimate that a very large percentage of new Internet users will be from India. That is what we are witnessing in the mobile industry — India is adding [5 million to 6 million] new [wireless] subscribers each month."

Yahoo! India plans to add more Indian languages to its chat service over the next six months and will eventually integrate local language support into its e-mail service, which  is currently available as a beta version. The updated mail program will also feature a redesigned user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop e-mail applications, message preview and an RSS reader. The latter is a Web-content sharing and distribution program that stands for "Really Simple Syndication." An RSS reader allows a computer user to view data feeds (headlines, summaries and links to full stories) from various news sources.

"Americans have come to expect from Yahoo.com an incredibly rich and useful Web portal," Zacharias said. "It engages its users very well. Our expectation for Yahoo! India is that it will be just the same for Indians — very rich in content, including communications in e-mail and instant messaging. It will remain the most preferred Web portal for Indians."