Also there is an element of love and pride associated with the mother tongue. Banking on this opportunity two young entrepreneurs from IIT Chennai started Tachyon Technologies which has just launched SMS in regional language. The flagship product of the company Quillpad launched in 2006, provides an intuitive input mechanism for online users to enter text in any regional language including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi and Nepali using the English keyboard.
“India has more than 400 million mobile users and the penetration is beyond the urban elite and middle class. The most widely used features of the mobile phone remain voice and SMS. We realised that there is a language barrier in using SMS and launched Quillpad Mobile,” say Tachyon Technologies Founder & CEO Ram Prakash.
Quillpad Mobile allows typing of Indian languages using English mobile keypad and it will be made available in all major Indian languages - Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali and Punjabi.
“All mobiles phones introduced in India do not support Indian language; so initially we are rolling out Quillpad mobile in Hindi as most handsets come with Hindi fonts. However, Quillpad uses its technology to support Indian language fonts on handsets that do not come with Indian language fonts bundled,” adds Ram Prakash.
The use of regional languages will certainly make mobiles a friendlier device for the rural population, believes Ram Prakash. “The use of vernacular language will also help in e-governance and mobile governance as the rural masses will be able to send SMS and receive SMS in their own language, especially in crisis situations like the floods,” he added.
Currently Quillpad is available in a few models of LG mobile phone. The company is also in touch with other major handset manufacturers and mobile service providers to offer the feature as value added service for their customers.
Consumers can download Quillpad mobile to their phones (via GPRS) or to their computers by logging on to http://www.quillpadmobile.in. They can install the product and try it out for free by sending a limited number of messages. After that, in order to continue to use the product, they will need to buy the product license by making a payment of Rs 149.
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