Google Assistant is probably the smartest virtual assistant out there, and Google just made it smarter. At its annual Google For India summit held in New Delhi this week, the Mountain View giant announced some big updates for Google Assistant in the Indian market. The major highlights of the announcement include support for Hindi and other regional languages and a new toll-free number for customer support.
Starting with Hindi support, you can switch your Google Assistant to the Indian language just by saying “OK Google, Hindi mein bolo”. While the feature has been part of Google Assistant for quite some time now, it is now independent of the language selected in your device. Google Assistant also brings independent support for other languages including Gujarati, Kannada, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil, and Telugu.
Google believes the addition of these regional languages will help it increase its local presence across the country. This will allow it to cater to audiences in North and South India.
Apart from that, Google also announced that its Google For India event, the introduction of a new toll-free mobile number that can be used when you need to use Assistant despite not being connected to the Internet.
Currently, Google is testing this feature in two Indian cities: Lucknow and Kanpur. The company has partnered with Vodafone-Idea to launch the number 000-800-9191-000 that will allow users to chat with Google Assistant in Hindi and English. Users with low Internet connectivity can call up this number to check scores, get traffic updates, and locate stores around you.
