Multibhashi—An Online Platform for Learning Vernacular Languages
📄Company Profiles
Learning a new language is always advantageous. Being multilingual can bring along career benefits, in many fields like marketing, education, sales, banking, public relations, tourism, etc. to name a few. Not just this, several studies have shown that learning new languages has many cognitive benefits as well. However, learning a new language is by no means an easy task. After a certain age learning a new language becomes more challenging. Again, taking a formal training on any language is time consuming and expensive.
Luckily, with the advent of the internet era, with everything else, learning a language has also become somewhat easier. Now teachers and students can come together virtually allowing flexibility of learning at one’s own pace and time. Multibhashi, a Bangalore based startup is utilizing the power of the internet to help learners learn new languages through one’s native language. Besides serving as a platform for learning languages, Multibhashi also provides various translation and transcription services along with creating content for various purposes in multiple languages.
StartupTalky interviewed Multibhashi founder Anuradha Agarwal to know how this startup came into being, and how it is simplifying the process of learning new languages.
| Startup Name | Multibhashi |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Founder | Anuradha Agarwal |
| Sector | Employability |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Parent Organization | Multibhashi Solutions Pvt Ltd |
| Website | multibhashi.com |
Multibhashi - About & How it Works
Multibhashi - Founders & Team
Multibhashi - How It All Started?
Multibhashi - Name, Tagline and Logo
Multibhashi - Revenue Model
Multibhashi - Funding and Investors
Multibhashi - User Acquisition
Multibhashi - Startup Challenges
Multibhashi - Competitors
Multibhashi - Advisors and Mentors
Multibhashi - Awards
Multibhashi - Growth
Multibhashi - FAQ's
Multibhashi - Conclusion
Multibhashi - About & How it Works
Multibhashi aims to empower blue-collar aspirants and workers towards gainful employment and career progression by linguistic upskilling via bilingual mode in a blended e-learning format.
Multibhashi is an android/web app for learning languages most effectively and effortlessly. The current version of the app has audio-visual courses and quizzes to learn English from Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi. You can also learn Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Oriya and Punjabi through English.
Some USPs of Multibhashi app are-
- Multibhashi offers self - paced learning that any learner can utilize in leisure /off-working hours, thereby, making this a more viable and affordable solution to the target segment
- The self-paced learning is augmented by live tutor assisted training that ensures personalized blended learning to catalyze the learning process.
- Bilingual training ensures each learner can pick up a new language via the native mode of instruction before graduating to monolingual learning.
- Multibhashi’s interactive e-learning platform is based on the latest cloud technologies that ensure low latency and low data consumption on devices as varied as simple browser-enabled feature phones to the latest smartphones, thus, making it a ubiquitous solution for the masses of India.
- Lets the learners learn the content in bite-sized chunks that helps the learners in grasping the learning quickly.
- The platform allows adaptive learning by applying algorithms to personalize the content as per the learner's pattern, grasping power, etc.
- The learners can chat with the mentors anytime to clear doubts.
- Evaluates and assesses the learner’s progress from time to time to ensure better learning.
Besides all these, Multibhashi offers several other services like multilingual SEO services, transcription services, translation services, social media content creation in vernacular languages, and much other content and voice-related services in multiple languages.
Multibhashi has recently started "Multibhashi classes" where students can learn English from more than 500 language experts through live video calls. These classes give an opportunity for students to directly learn the language over a video call any time of the day, from the comfort of their homes and we have been seeing a lot of students who are interested in these classes.
Multibhashi - Founders & Team
Anuradha Agarwal is the founder of Multibhashi. Anuradha comes from Jaipur, Rajasthan. She finished her Engineering and went on to pursue her MBA in Finance. She was a part of Dexter Capital Advisors before she started Multibhashi.
The current core team at Multibhashi comes with diverse experience, yet they all unanimously possess the commitment to building a strong community of English learners. The current team size is about 10 who handle different aspects of the product. Apart from this, there is also a team of 200+ educated housewives who work from home and help the company with several projects.
Multibhashi - How It All Started?
The idea to start Multibhashi was born out of Anuradha’s genuine will to help people learn English. Anuradha started out by helping a few people in her immediate circle who needed help with English learning. Even before the app was launched, Anuradha created over 100 animated videos which taught various concepts of English and started posting them on Facebook. She also designed a chatbot for helping people play quizzes on various topics related to English and the page became more and more popular. In order to make the content more engaging, she created an audiovisual course.
Soon after, she formed a team and launched an Android app to teach English from Hindi and Bangla, and there has been no looking back after that.
When Anuradha was searching for online resources to help learners learn English, she realized that there is no single comprehensive solution to learn a language.
There were problems like-
- Blue-collar workers who work on a daily wage basis cannot take a break to attend classroom training as it impacts their daily earnings
- Existing classroom training is expensive for the target segment.
- Personalized training, specifically, linguistic training via native language cannot be feasible in CRT format.
Multibhashi is a solution for all these problems.
Chayanika Goswami
Multibhashi - Name, Tagline and Logo
The name came to Anuradha’s mind when Multibhashi wasn’t even a business idea. Anuradha was looking for a name for the Facebook page on which she intended to share all the videos she had created for helping her friends and family members in learning English.
Anuradha wanted a blended name which had English as well as an Indian element. Since the page was dealing with languages “Bhasha/Bhashi” seemed like a good choice. At the same time, Anuradha wanted to convey that this is an open platform for people from different language backgrounds, and this thought leads her to add the word “Multi”.
“Multibhashi literally means a polyglot and that’s what we intend to turn people into” says Anuradha.
Multibhashi - Revenue Model
Multibhashi earns revenue through ads, private sessions and gamification techniques on the app. As a content company, Multibhashi also earns revenue by providing various services related to content like translation, content creation and repurposing, transliteration among others.
Multibhashi - Funding and Investors
Multibhashi has raised 1 round of seed funding till date.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Inestor |
|---|---|---|---|
| September, 2018 | Seed | Rs 10 Million | Aniruddha Malpani & Startup Oasis |
More than the money we are highly grateful for our investors who brought in some very good advice connects and mentorship.
Multibhashi - User Acquisition
India has more than 450 million people engaged in blue and grey collared job roles and gradually they are all coming online via cheap handsets and data availability. This is the target segment for Multibhashi.
Although reaching from 0 to 1.5 million has been challenging and a roller-coaster ride, it has given us the opportunity to experiment with different marketing campaigns.
When it comes to attracting and retaining customers, what worked best for Multibhashi was search-oriented campaigns which made sure that only those users are identified and targeted who had a clear intention of learning the language.
The next best way of acquisition has been word of mouth, referral & downloads through content sharing in its community. Re-marketing to dropped off users also worked well for Multibhashi.
Chayanika Goswami
Multibhashi - Startup Challenges
Multibhashi teaches English from regional languages and vice versa. Using the bilingual approach, it ensures that the user is able to learn the language he wants to learn from a language that he already knows and speaks well. Right from acquiring the user to the point where he completes the course, the Multibhashi team ensures every user gets personalized messages, notifications and advertising banners in the language that he knows because users like to see and read these messages in a language that he already is good with.
Dealing with so many languages is definitely a challenge for Multibhashi.
Multibhashi - Competitors
Duolingo, Hello English and Busuu, are some competitors of Multibhashi. However, what sets Multibhashi apart is a keen focus on learning outcomes.
As Anuradha says, “We don’t believe in chasing just the engagement numbers. Engagement is just a means to the final end which is only achieved when our learner can confidently say that he/she can sufficiently understand and speak in the target language”
Multibhashi - Advisors and Mentors
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani from Malpani ventures is mentoring Multibhashi.
Multibhashi - Awards
- Multibhashi was selected by Axilor, a platform for supporting early-stage startups, Gray Matters Capital and Google Launchpad Accelerator
- GMC Calibrator aimed to focus on the behavioral understanding of users leading to product tweaks that improve learner engagement. Multibhashi got mentored and engaged in one-on-one workshops in the areas of behavioral design, mobile product strategy, monetization and product optimization.
- It was selected to be a part of FbStart, a global program designed to help startups build and grow their businesses
- Multibhashi was selected to be a part of the AWS EdTech startup accelerator, which is designed to help entrepreneurs build the next generation of online learning, analytics, and campus management solutions on the AWS Cloud
- Multibhashi was featured on Forbes in November 2017
- It was featured under “top startups to watch out for in 2019” by SutraHR
- Multibhashi was selected as one of the top 10 startups out of the 1700 applications received by Startup India and Whatsapp under the Whatsapp Grand challenge
Chayanika Goswami
Multibhashi - Growth
Multibhashi is already 1.5 million-plus learners strong and also have 100+ clients in the language services domain. Multibhashi has 1 Million downloads in the Play Store and has a received a rating of 4.4 from 27.5K+ users.
It intends to reach 10 million users in the next one year and establish Multibhashi as a gold standard in language learning.
Multibhashi - FAQ's
What is the best place to learn Hindi in India?
Learning Hindi in both online and offline modes can prove to be fun for you. It’s always beneficial to be bilingual. Below mentioned are some offline places where you can learn Hindi.
- Rosemount’s Institute of Languages (Dehradun)
- Hindi Guru (Panchsheel Park)
- Zabaan Language Institute
- Landour Language School
Where can I learn Hindi professionally online?
Some of the websites and apps where you can learn Hindi professionally are Duolingo, HindiPod101, Udemy, and MultiBhashi.
Is Portuguese language easy to learn?
Learning a language that is not our mother tongue is not that easy but the effort and time one spends to learn a language will be worth it.
What are good ways to learn how to speak Kannada?
The first step is to get familiarized with the structure of the language. To achieve this, hear more and more Kannada on Radio, TV and also try to catch the live conversations.
What are some best ways to Learn Russian for corporate people?
Below listed are the seven most trusted sources for learning business Russian below.
- Blog and Audio Lessons: Everyday Russian
- Book: “Learn Russian to Work with Russians”
- Learning Program: Multibhashi
- Video: Ru-Land Club
- Podcast: UCLA Business Russian
- Online Course: Business Russian IC
- Personalized Course: Communicaid
Multibhashi - Conclusion
Multibhashi, a simplified Language learning platform for upskilling vernacular languages for people who wants to learn new languages and become proficient in multi-languages. It helps the speakers in spoken English as well as refinement of vernacular speakers in their own Indic language usage & associated etiquettes and soft skills.
Multibhashi App is available on the play store and iOS store to learn languages most effectively and effortlessly. The currently available version on the stores has audio-visual courses and quizzes to learn English from almost all Indian languages and vice versa.
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