India is a core market for growth at LinkedIn and the second largest market in terms of members after the US, accounting for 82 million members as part of a global community of 800 million members. Starting today, as part of the Phase 1 roll-out of LinkedIn in Hindi, members will be able to access their feed, profile, jobs, messaging, and create content in Hindi on desktop, and on their Android and iOS phones.
With this launch, LinkedIn aims to break down language barriers, providing greater access to professional and networking opportunities to Hindi speakers in India and around the world.
“With the launch of Hindi, now more members and customers can unlock greater value from the platform through content, jobs, and networking, and express themselves in a language that they feel comfortable in. We have witnessed high engagement and member growth in the last year, and it is at this exciting inflection point that we are strengthening our vision to create economic opportunity for ‘every’ member of the workforce, and taking down language barriers for Hindi speakers across the world,” says Ashutosh Gupta, India Country Manager, LinkedIn.
The company stated that LinkedIn’s India member base has grown by 20+ million in the past three years (15% year-over-year growth) and it has witnessed a spike in engagement and conversations on the platform since the pandemic.
With the launch of Hindi, LinkedIn now supports 25 languages globally. LinkedIn will also work towards widening the range of job opportunities available for Hindi speaking professionals across industries, including more banking, and government jobs. The platform will continue to add more Hindi publishers and creators in the coming weeks to boost member engagement and conversations in Hindi.
LinkedIn in Hindi is now available to all members globally on Desktop and Android, and will gradually roll out to all iOS users in the coming days. LinkedIn’s localisation effort comes after almost every major global networking app available in the country across Facebook, Twitter and Clubhouse among other have introduced regional language support for multiple Indian languages.
Smartphone users will need to select Hindi as their preferred device language under phone settings to view the LinkedIn mobile application in Hindi. User-generated content, such as posts on a member’s home feed, will be displayed in the language that they were originally created in but users will have the option to view Hindi translation of the same.
The launch of Hindi is part of LinkedIn’s vision to become a more equitable platform, and to allow more diverse professional communities to unlock greater value from LinkedIn, said the company. Other global initiatives include Project Every Member and the LinkedIn Fairness Toolkit that build equality into LinkedIn’s products and remove systemic biases and barriers to opportunity.
