Amazon is offering Indian users the opportunity to participate in beta testing a Hindi version of Alexa+.

      Amazon is currently beta-testing a Hindi version of Alexa+ in India, marking its initial foray into a non-Western-language market. According to TechCrunch, the company has reached out to select Indian customers via email, inviting them to participate in this beta-testing program.

      The invitations requested users to complete a form in Hindi by June 22 to enroll in the program. The message stated, “We are creating a new Alexa experience, and your feedback will be valuable in shaping what Alexa+ can do,” and mentioned that participants would be informed when the Hindi testing experience is ready.

      Amazon has confirmed the testing of Alexa+ in India but has chosen not to provide further details. The beta version may contain bugs and could deliver incorrect information or mispronounce local dialects, as noted in the email. Alexa+ is not yet available in India, and there is no announced launch date.

      The Hindi-speaking market is vast, with over 600 million speakers in India, many of whom engage in conversations that blend Hindi and English. Amazon introduced Alexa in India with English support in 2017 and added Hindi capability in September 2019, but the original version was a command-driven system lacking the conversational AI features that distinguish Alexa+.

      Alexa+ represents Amazon’s generative AI transformation of its voice assistant, incorporating a combination of its models and third-party AI from companies like Anthropic. Alexa+ was announced in February 2025 and was made accessible to all US users in February 2026, costing approximately twenty dollars monthly, although Prime members receive it for free. The service has since expanded to several countries, including the UK, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, and France.

      The launch in India signifies a major shift beyond Western markets. However, the country poses specific challenges for voice AI, such as the presence of numerous regional languages, frequent code-switching between Hindi and English, and distinctive pronunciation patterns diverging from the accents most AI models are trained on.

      Amazon is not the only player targeting Indian voice users. Last week, Reliance’s Jio unveiled its Call Agent at its annual shareholder meeting—an AI assistant capable of joining phone calls, transcribing discussions, and handling tasks like cab bookings and food orders. Jio stated that this service would accommodate 22 Indian languages and cater to its over 500 million subscribers.

      Additionally, Meta recently invested $900 million in the Indian fintech startup Cred and appointed its founder to lead WhatsApp, highlighting India's status as a fiercely competitive tech market. Amazon's own commitment of $35 billion to India, primarily focused on logistics and ecommerce, is now extending into the realm of AI.

      The question remains whether Amazon can successfully adapt Alexa+ for the Hindi-speaking audience to compete against local options. The original Alexa did not achieve the same level of popularity in India as it did in the US, and a beta version with glitches and mispronunciations is a considerable distance from a refined product. However, Amazon's investment in Hindi localization indicates that the company views India as a crucial element of its AI assistant strategy, rather than merely an afterthought.