Top 6 e-commerce brands with Voice Assistants in their app

E-commerce brands have been hard at work for the past couple of years to expand their business into Tier 2 cities and beyond in India, commonly referred to as Bharat and whose users collectively are known as Next Billion Users. 

According to the 2020 Unicommerce report, 67% of all orders during the festive sales in 2020 came from Tier 2 cities and beyond. With adoption growing at such a fast pace, it’s no wonder that top e-commerce brands are already rushing to create a stronghold in these markets. Unlike Tier 1 users who are spoilt for choice, the Next Billion Users will stick to brands that can cultivate trust. 

Top e-commerce giants are using Voice Commerce as the key pillar to target these Next Billion Users. 

Here are the top 6 e-commerce apps which have already started executing on their Voice Commerce strategy by adding In-app Voice Assistants:

1. Flipkart

• Rolled out to all the users
• Flipkart’s  In-App Voice Assistant can understand local dialects, colloquial terms and mixed language commands.
• 16% of the voice users shopped for groceries using Voice Assistant in the Hindi language.
• Functionality is currently limited to searching for items. Addition, removal and modification are absent currently.
• Acquired liv.ai two years back to kickstart the development of their in-app voice assistant

2. Amazon Shopping App

• Rolled out to all users
• In-app Voice Assistant - Activated by saying “Hey Alexa” or by clicking on the microphone icon next to the search bar
• Voice Search and Voice Navigation supported
• Alexa answered over 100k voice requests during the Great Indian Festival
• English only experience currently. No support for regional languages yet.

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3. Udaan App (Voice-enabled by Slang Labs)

• Still at an experiment stage (limited roll-out)
• Enables their retailers to search, place orders and navigate using Voice
• Triggered using a floating microphone icon that is available on all screens
• Supports 2 languages - English and Hindi
• The In-App assistant is trained to understand all retail jargon.
• Assistant supports “Voice Search, Voice Navigation and Voice Action”
• Started out with Pharmacy and later expanded the Voice Assistant to support the Grocery category too.

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4. Jio Mart

• In-app voice assistant rolled out to all users
• Triggered by using the microphone icon next to the search bar
• Support for 2 Languages (English and Hindi)
• The assistant today is capable of simple user journeys. 
• Voice Search, Voice Actions (Voice to cart) and Voice Navigation is supported.
• Jio acquired another company to build the in-app voice assistant.

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5. P&G: B2B app for retailers (Voice-enabled by Slang Labs)

• Voice-enabled using Slang’s Voice Commerce Platform. 
• Still at experiment stage (limited roll-out)
• Enables their retailers to search and place orders by Voice
• Triggered using a floating microphone icon that is available on all screens
• Support for 2 languages (English and Hindi)
• Supports - Voice Search, Voice Action, Voice Navigation and Voice Promotions

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6. Big Basket (Voice-enabled by Slang Labs)

• Voice-enabled using  “Slang’s Voice Commerce Platform. 
• Still at experiment stage (limited roll-out)
• Triggered using a floating microphone icon that is available on all screens
• Slang Voice Assistant understands five languages:  English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.
• The In-App assistant is trained to understand retail-related terms.
• Supports - Voice Search and Voice Navigation.
• Nearly 25% of searches were made from Non-Tier 1 cities.

We wrote an e-book with more in-depth details on various e-commerce brands adding voice assistants.

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Long integration time, cost and domain expertise were all barriers to adding an in-app voice assistant for smaller brands, but now any e-commerce brand can enable voice commerce in their apps using Slang CONVA, the easiest and most accurate low-code Vernacular Voice Commerce platform, that enables brands to add a delightful multi-lingual Voice experience inside their apps in a few days.