Article

The English tax is stopping India's startups from reaching their next billion users

Sajith Pai · Scroll.in Free Beginner India

A sharp piece on how building English-first quietly locks Indian startups out of their next few hundred million users. It makes the vernacular point concrete: a trend can be real for English India and irrelevant for the India that speaks something else. Read it before assuming metro traction generalizes.

  • English-only products serve a small slice of India
  • Vernacular and voice are the real reach unlock
  • Metro traction can hide a hard ceiling on adoption
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The question it answers

  1. How do I tell the difference between a trend that only matters to Silicon Valley and one that will actually land in India?

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