Vokal is a vernacular knowledge-sharing app that bridges the digital knowledge gap among non-English internet users by enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing using voice. It was developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna (co-founder of TaxiForSure) and Mayank Bidawataka (co-founder of redBus, and founder of TheMediaAnt and Goodbox).
Lucrative
The inspiration for the app seems to come from a potentially lucrative market. “More than 90% of the Indian population doesn’t know English. However, a study by KPMG and Google suggests that by 2021, regional language users are expected to account for nearly 75% of India’s internet user base. The fact remains that almost all internet companies are catering to the same 100 million English-speaking, largely-urban population. Vernacular India has many questions, but there is hardly any content in vernacular languages on the Internet. We wanted to cater to the majority non-English speaking community,” say the founders.
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Vokal is similar to Quora; except, the Bengaluru-based start-up enables users to ask questions in vernacular languages, for which answers are recorded. As to why it does not employ the written word, says Mayank, “Most Indians prefer listening, or watching, over reading. Hence, we decided to incorporate audio and video answers. Experts can also conduct live video sessions and share their knowledge with a large audience.”
“We get the best minds in the country to come and share their experiences. These experts, then, invite their friends to answer. Hence, we constantly keep acquiring new experts. The app proves beneficial for the asker as well as the answerer; the experts have an opportunity to build an online brand for themselves,” Mayank adds.
The app already has two million users a month. “Many questions have pre-existing answers, which can be accessed instantaneously. For new and unique questions, the user can expect to get an answer within an hour, at the most.” At present, the languages available on Vokal are: Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya and Assamese.
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