On Thursday, the platform launched its Hindi language version, making it a significant moment in their operational processes in the Indian market. (Picture provided by Quora) On Thursday, the platform launched its Hindi language version, making it a significant moment in their operational processes in the Indian market. (Picture provided by Quora) When California-based social media company Quora was launched in 2009 the idea was to create a platform to ‘share and grow the world’s knowledge’. Over time this unique question-answer platform has grown to serve more than 200 million unique visitors, a significant percentage of which is from India. On Thursday, the platform launched its Hindi language version, making it a significant moment in their operational processes in the Indian market. “We have chosen to launch Quora in Hindi for many reasons. One is of course that we want to share the world’s knowledge and that does not exist in English only,” says Gautam Shewakramani who is the country manager India at Quora. He adds that from a pragmatic point of view, global research has shown that Hindi is a very large language in terms of online usage. “Within Quora as well we have users who have given us signals that they speak Hindi and they want Quora in Hindi,” he says. Quora allows users to ask any question that concerns them and the question is then made available to anybody and everybody to answer based on their personal experience and knowledge. In the past couple of years, Quora has been expanding the language base of its platform. In 2016 it was launched in Spanish. The following year they launched four new language portals including those in French, German, Italian and Japanese. Earlier this month, they launched Quora Indonesian and then made their entry into the vernacular market of India through Hindi. “We know there is a demand for the website in other Indian languages as well and have been planning on these lines,” says Shewakramani. Quora allows users to ask any question that concerns them and the question is then made available to anybody and everybody to answer based on their personal experience and knowledge. (Picture provided by Quora) Quora allows users to ask any question that concerns them and the question is then made available to anybody and everybody to answer based on their personal experience and knowledge. (Picture provided by Quora) But with the launch of the website in Hindi, there is a unique cultural space that the platform has also decided to enter, with a specific set of challenges that come with it. Quora in Hindi: Do we really need it? An important point that could be raised on the necessity or the lack of it for Quora launching in Hindi is the fact that with almost all major operating systems supporting the language, users across the world are able to access the same information in Hindi as is available in English on the web. However, it is also necessary to keep in mind that this issue might be specific to India since here a large majority of internet users are bilingual or multilingual, having some degree of knowledge of English. This is definitely not the case across the globe, with a large number of countries speaking in a single language. “From a personalisation standpoint, the type of content that is generated in different languages is different. The answer to the same question might be different in English and Hindi might be different based on cultural background and who is writing the answer,” says Shewakramani. He adds that there are some topics that they have noticed to be more popular in India than anywhere else which include, technology, education, life, and relationships. “Hindi also becomes very important because there might be topics which Hindi speakers might want to converse about but are not finding the means to do so,” says Neha Agarwal, community manager, Quora India. What are the limitations of launching Quora in Hindi? When launching a knowledge sharing based website in a vernacular, it needs to be kept in mind that while every language does indeed carry within it a specific kind of knowledge system, it is also true that global knowledge systems are also interlinked through the medium of English. Therefore, there is a possibility of a large number of Hindi language users of the website being kept away from content that is created in English. “This is an issue of translation. We as a platform will not translate content on behalf of our users. However, users have the option of translating their own content as well as other content. Credit will be given both to the original author of the answer and the translator,” says Shewakramani. Further, there is also the challenge of Hindi language speakers who do not read and write in the language but are eager to access knowledge through visual or auditory means. “We are truly agnostic to the medium that used for sharing knowledge. So far text has been best at sharing knowledge. We have been experimenting with video recently and it’s very clear that over time we will have to experiment with other mechanisms,” explains Shewakramani.<doc-sep>Answer: Quora Question-and-answer platform Quora was launched in Hindi on Thursday and it will soon be introduced in other Indian regional languages as well. “India is a large and important market for us and we have a large number of users from India. It was a natural extension for us that we would want to launch in local languages,” said Gautam Shewakramani, India Country Manager at Quora, told Moneycontrol. He further said Hindi was found to be an extremely widely spoken language among Quora’s users, and that the company does plan to launch other languages in India. Founded in 2009 by Adam D’Angelo, Facebook’s first chief technology officer, Quora is also available in other languages including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese and Indonesian. At present, Quora has 200 million monthly unique visitors. While Quora has a self-service, auction-based advertisement platform in English, it is not planning to launch the same in Hindi just yet, Shewakramani added. Quora wants to focus on quality and credibility of information shared on the platform, he said. The platform launched a beta version in Hindi to a small group of people in April 2018 before the official launch on Thursday. Language localisation is a big focus area for platforms because a potential 205 million Internet non-users are likely to go digital if Internet is provided in a language of their choice, according to a report called “Internet in India 2017”, published jointly by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Kantar IMRB. Since all content on Quora is generated by users, Shewakramani said the platform makes all possible effort to ensure the matter is as genuine as possible. This includes a real name policy, a community of users that flags inappropriate content, moderation teams and machine learning that weeds out inappropriate content. Quora counts several prominent people as members, such as former US President Barack Obama, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Minister for Coal, Finance and Railways Piyush Goel.<doc-sep>
Besides English, the platform is available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and starting May 2018 Indonesian too. Besides English, the platform is available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and starting May 2018 Indonesian too. Aiming to expand its user base in India, popular question-and-answer platform Quora on Thursday launched in Hindi and promised the roll out of the platform in several other Indian vernacular languages soon. “The launch of Quora Hindi is an expansion of our mission to share knowledge. We will soon launch the platform in other Indian languages within a few months,” Gautam Shewakramani, India Country Manager at Quora, told IANS. “We are preparing the launch of the platform in several languages and the next launch may be in more than one language,” Shewakramani said. Quora was founded in 2009 by Adam D’Angelo, a former Chief Technology Officer at Facebook. The Mountain View, California-headquartered company currently has 200 million monthly unique visitors. Its English language version started generating revenues through advertisements from May 2017. Besides English, the platform is available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and starting May 2018 Indonesian too. “There is currently no plan to monetise Quora Hindi. The focus now is on maintaining quality and credibility of information shared on the platform,” Shewakramani said. “The idea of knowledge-sharing has a universal appeal. India fits well into our mission as this country has always valued knowledge and shared them with the greater world community,” he added. Quora launched a beta version in Hindi to a small group of people in April 2018 before making it available to all. “Quora has been popular in India for many years, and now that we are opening Quora up in Hindi we hope to have even more participation from people in India. I’ve been excited to see the engagement throughout the beta of Quora in Hindi,” Shewakramani said. “During the past few months, we’ve already seen thoughtful answers on diverse subjects, such as the relevance of Ram and Sita to couples today, the best places to visit in Delhi, advice for people traveling outside India who do not speak English, gender equality at home, among many others,” he added. Since its launch in English in 2010, Quora has attracted leading personalities and experts who have answered all kinds of questions asked by people on Quora, and shared knowledge that was not available before. People like former US President Barack Obama, Flipkart Co-Founder Sachin Bansal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and social sector expert Smarinita Shetty are just a few examples.