About 90% of India's new Internet users consume content in local languages

The demand for local language content in India is growing at a rapid pace with ninety percent of new internet users in the country consuming content in vernacular languages.

"Nearly 40 million users of the Internet who were added from 2015-18 and nine out of ten such new users are Indian language user," said Nidhi Gupta, senior product manager at Google India, at a press conference on Tuesday.

Hindi emerged as the most consumed language with strong growth compared to other languages like English. These new users largely consume video and audio content on the internet.

Google recognised the growing demand for Indian language content and integrated greater Indian language support across its products and services, Gupta added.

The search engine giant has been bullish about the prospect of vernacular content consumption in India. It has launched many of its products like Search, Shopping, Discover, Bolo, Lens and Assistance supporting Indic languages. In September, Hindi, witnessing 5X growth in a year, emerging as the second-most used language globally on Google Assistant.

In May, Google had revealed in its report that internet usage and growth will be majorly driven by non-metro cities, which are fast catching up with the metro cities.

It will be primarily leading in three verticals - voice, vernacular, and video - the report had added.

In the past couple of years, a lot of language content platforms have come up as the next half a billion Internet users are expected to come from non-English speaking regions.

Adoption of the Internet among the vernacular population has also given an impetus to content players such as ShareChat, NewsDog, Dailyhunt and UC News among others, who have gained notable growth and attracting advertisers.