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title: The mistake overseas advertisers keep making in India
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# The mistake overseas advertisers keep making in India

[Medical Pharmaceutical Translations](https://aiatranslations.com/blog/topic/medical-pharmaceutical-translations) • Jan 10, 2020 12:00:00 AM

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India is the world’s [third-largest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India) economy in terms of purchasing power, so it’s no wonder that brands from overseas want to sell there. But they don’t always start out on the right foot.

A default for many brands is print advertising campaigns that mix English and Hindi. This might work for certain markets, but the [reality](https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/what-languages-are-spoken-in-india) is that with 22 official languages, and a total of 19,000 spoken languages and dialects, the Indian market is far from simply bilingual.

A fascinating, in-depth article shows how and why print advertisements in “Hinglish” are often puzzling or simply ineffective to locals. Hindi is far from the only non-English language spoken in India; in fact, journalist Karthik Srinivasan reveals that it isn’t spoken in many regions of the country.

There is no real Indian lingua franca. As the previous source I linked to explains, if two people from random places in India were to meet, there is only a 36% chance that they would understand each other. In addition, certain cultural aspects of areas where Hindi is spoken don’t apply to other areas.

[Read on](https://qz.com/india/1767016/indian-brands-must-move-from-hinglish-to-tamil-telugu-malayalam/) for some notable “Hinglish” advertising fails, suggestions for how advertising in India could be improved, and a few examples of smart companies who’ve started to truly localize their ad campaigns for different regions.

[*Image source*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status_in_India#/media/File:Language_region_maps_of_India.svg)

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