Amazon India has announced the fourth anniversary of Alexa in India. The tech giant shared insights on the Alexa voice service i adding that “millions” of Indian customers have used the service in English, Hindi and Hinglish oon Echo range of devices, Fire TV, Amazon shopping app for Android, and Alexa built-in devices by other brands.
Almost 50 per cent customers for the service come from non-metro cities. Further, the number of requests to Alexa in 2021 increased by 68 per cent since the previous year.
“We are constantly working to make Alexa more useful and delightful for customers in India with launches such as our most advanced Echo Show 10 with intelligent motion, India’s first celebrity voice with Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, and the Mahindra XUV700 vehicle with Alexa built-in”, said Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, Amazon India.
“Many customers have shared feedback that having Alexa around makes life more fun, convenient and productive. This encouragement helps us to continue innovating and work like it’s still day one,” added Kumar.
Amazon also shared certain trends related to Alexa, oincluding some of the most popular requests to Alexa in 2021.
Alexa played more than 21.6 lakh songs every day during the year with genre such as kids, devotional and regional language being quite prominent in the top 20 songs.
Further, as Alexa smart home selection increased by 72 per cent Y-o-Y with new products from brands like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Hindware, and Atomberg, the voice assistant responded to over 2.6 lakh requests for controlling smart home appliances every day.
“From sports, movie dialogs, and word definitions to tough math problems, weather, and the latest stock market updates, customers quizzed Alexa with around 1.7 lakh questions every day,” it further shared.
Users also turned to the device during the Covid-19 second wave. During March-April 2021, customers asked 11,500 questions every day about Covid, health and wellness related topics.
Further, customers also loved greeting the assistant each day as they wished “Alexa, good morning” and “Alexa, good night” 11,520 times every day.
Alexa’s speech science improvements
The company has also been working on improving Alexa’s understanding of customer requests in English, Hindi and a mixed language such as Hinglish in various Indian dialects and accents.
“In 2021, with a move to neural speech recognition technology, Alexa became more accurate in understanding user queries and we reduced Automatic Speech Recognition errors by 25 per cent,” Amazon said.
The team also drove numerous initiatives towards algorithmic improvement of Alexa’s understanding of English and Hindi. This has led to 27 per cent improvement in Alexa’s Natural Language Understanding.
“They equipped Alexa with hundreds of new words from the Hindi vocabulary, used machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to help Alexa understand different ways in which customers can ask for the same information. These improvements have made interactions with Alexa more natural,” it further said.
Amazon will also be offering a host of deals on Alexa devices including up to 50 per cent off on Amazon Echo range of smart speakers and displays, up to 43 per cent off on Fire TV devices, up to 30 per cent off on smart home gadgets and Alexa built-in devices by brands such as OnePlus, boAt, Wipro, Panasonic, Xiaomi & more.
These deals will be available for 48 hours; from 12 am on February 15 2022 till 11:59 PM on February 16 2022.
Published on
February 15, 2022
