According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Amazon Echo led the Indian smart speakers market with 59 percent share in 2018, followed by Google Home with 39 percent unit share. Right now, Alexa can understand some Hinglish commands but these are few and far between.

Apart from Hindi, users can respond to Alexa's English statements in Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and other regional languages.

"For us, it is a contextual, cultural as well as content-related challenge as the question is not that Alexa just needs to understand Hindi. This part we can do relatively easily but Alexa needs to be Indian when it speaks in Hindi as there are several dialects and accents out there which Alexa has to understand and react accordingly," Prasad said.

Amazon last year launched a new category of skill called "Cleo" that enables customers in India to help Alexa learn Hindi and other languages. The idea was to improve Alexa's language model and help her gradually speak in local languages.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Amazon Echo led the Indian smart speakers market with 59 percent share in 2018, followed by Google Home with 39 percent unit share. Right now, Alexa can understand some Hinglish commands but these are few and far between.

Apart from Hindi, users can respond to Alexa's English statements in Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and other regional languages.

"For us, it is a contextual, cultural as well as content-related challenge as the question is not that Alexa just needs to understand Hindi. This part we can do relatively easily but Alexa needs to be Indian when it speaks in Hindi as there are several dialects and accents out there which Alexa has to understand and react accordingly," Prasad said.

Amazon last year launched a new category of skill called "Cleo" that enables customers in India to help Alexa learn Hindi and other languages. The idea was to improve Alexa's language model and help her gradually speak in local languages.