While India is getting increasingly savvy by embracing new technologies, the presence of more than 18 official languages in the country poses a unique challenge. In order to facilitate the use of computers among non-english speaking people, there needs to be a product which lets users interact with computers in their native language — and India continues to develop we have seen many of these sorts of these services spring up. One of the more established among them is Lipikaar, which is a software suite for typing in Indian vernacular languages. We interviewed Lipikaar’s co-founder Neha Gupta to learn more about it.
What inspired you to create Lipikaar?
The core concept and method behind Lipikaar was invented and patented by my father, Jugal Gupta, for his business which deals in LED-based programmable scrolling display systems. He wanted to supply these displays to banks in remote corners of India where the messages are displayed in the local language. For example: होम लोन्स. ATM सेवा. क्रेडिट कार्ड सुविधा.
These messages need to be changed often by the bank operator using an ordinary keyboard. The simple QWERTY keyboard required a new method of typing Indian languages without any changes to the keyboard — and without any training so anyone in the bank can learn to type in Hindi, Bengali, or any other language in a few minutes on the same keyboard that they used for English. With this in mind, the Lipikaar method was invented.
Our motto is to break the language barrier and to make the computer experience language-independent for the millions of Indians who don’t speak or type in English but could use the PC to enhance their productivity and communication otherwise.
Tell us about your core team?
We are a core team of four people. Apart from this, we work with a small group of freelancers for specific services such as graphics where we do not have in-house expertise. We also work with a team of dealers who serve as our local sales offices in cities such as Delhi, Calcutta, and Bangalore.
Describe your product and target market? How do you generate revenue?
Lipikaar is a Unicode-based tool that simplifies typing in 18 Indian Languages. The popularity of Lipikaar comes from its SMS-style typing method which is both easy and intuitive. Six reasons that make Lipikaar stand out:
- Lipikaar is based on simple rules which allow you to type words accurately. With Lipikaar, even the most complicated word can be typed effortlessly in seconds like श्रीकृष्णार्जुनसंवादेऽर्जुनविषादयोगो
- No fluency in English is required. Lipikaar encourages users to think in their language.
- It is a simple, easy to use, and intuitive typing solution. No keyboard stickers required.
- It currently supports 18 languages – Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Nepali, Konkani, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Arabic and Urdu – and can scale to support more languages in the future.
- Lipikaar is based on Unicode and hence does not require you to have a specific font or application before you can view the content created using Lipikaar.
- Lipikaar can be used with all Windows Desktop Applications (which support Unicode) including MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Skype, Google Talk, Notepad etc.
It currently is bundled into 3 products: 1) Lipikaar Typing Software for Windows, which is a desktop application that allows users to create Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel sheets, memos, emails or simply chat in their language. This software comes with a per PC license and the Single PC License is priced at Rs. 799 ($16). 2) Lipikaar Addon for Firefox, which can be used to tweet, chat, comment, blog or write on any website within Firefox. 3) Lipikaar Website Plugin, a paid plugin which can be used by other websites. Using this, webmasters can allow their users to interact with the website in their own language.
Who uses Lipikaar?
Lipikaar for Firefox
We have more than 150,000 users, and on Mozilla alone we have 55,000 downloads. Major clients include Banking IT solutions providers in India and TV content aggregators. Hindi TV program guides for Airtel, Tata Sky, Reliance and others are written with Lipikaar.
Lipikaar is also used by bank tellers, teachers, lawyers, typists, Firefox enthusiasts and small businesses. Most people start with buying a single license and slowly end up buying more licenses for every PC. We have invested in providing good customer support on phone and email so even those who are not comfortable using computers can get started with Lipikaar.
What are your future plans?
Our main focus will be on increasing awareness about the product and exploring different avenues to market the product. We also plan to introduce Lipikaar on the mobile with applications for Android, iPhone etc.
