Brands that adapt early to Voice will have an advantage: Niraj Ruparel, Mindshare India - Exchange4media

Digital agencies today are brimming with ideas that can help brands integrate with voice-enabled technology. For Niraj Ruparel, National Head- Mobile, Mindshare India, conversational commerce using voice skill technology in India means serious business. In conversation with exchange4media, he delves into the nuances of voice technology, how brands can ensure that voice interaction for users is a seamless experience and what is working in the favour of Voice as the next big digital trend. The agency's tryst with voice began in January this year, explains Ruparel after global giants Google and Amazon recognised the potential for voice in India. "Voice is pretty big in Tier 2 markets, which is in terms of the penetration or how we reach out to audiences in the rural market. If you talk about the ecosystem per se, we're talking about close to 100 crore active sim cards in India and almost 450 million sim cards are resting on feature phones where the only mode of communication is Voice, so that plays a dominant role there. But now we see those 550 million SIMs which are sitting on 400 million smartphones, 30 per cent of those people have now started querying on Voice Assistants."