Yahoo! India intros maps in local languages

BANGALORE, INDIA: Yahoo! India has introduced maps in local Indian languages and walking directions, for the first time in India.

Yahoo! India Maps is now available in nine local languages. Apart from English, users can also experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Yahoo! India also offers the option of walking directions. Users can walk to their destinations with a simple walking route.

These directions can be sent to a mobile phone as an SMS.

Yahoo! India users can search for directions across 179 cities, 4,767 towns, and 226,114 villages. They can also search for over 3 million points of interest already marked by Internet users from around the web.

Gopal Krishna, head of Audience, Yahoo! India, said, “For the first time in India, walking directions and maps in local languages are being introduced by Yahoo! India. This aligns well with Yahoo! India’s overall strategy of enabling more users to experience the Internet on a PC or Mobile.”

Yahoo! India Maps (beta) was launched in April 2007 and is a Web 2.0 product built out of Yahoo!’s R&D center in Bangalore. It is accessible on its existing Yahoo! India maps at http://in.maps.yahoo.com.