The 9 Indian languages your audience speaks, and how to reply in each

India has 22 official languages. Your Instagram audience contains Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Hindi and Marathi speakers at the same time. Reply to all of them in English and you are asking most of them to do a small amount of extra work before they can buy from you.

ViralDM answers in the language the message came in. The AI works out which language a follower wrote in and replies in that one — in a way that sounds like a person, not a translation engine.

Supported languages

1. Hindi — the largest audience base
2. Hinglish — Hindi and English mixed, the way people actually type
3. Tamil — Tamil Nadu and Chennai creators
4. Telugu — Andhra and Telangana
5. Bengali — West Bengal and the diaspora
6. Marathi — Maharashtra creators
7. Gujarati — D2C and lifestyle brands
8. Punjabi — Punjab and the diaspora
9. Kannada — Bengaluru creators

Plus full English support.

How the detection works

Three signals decide the language:

1. Script. Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali and the rest are recognised immediately.
2. Vocabulary. Words like "bhai", "boss", "anna", "didi".
3. Romanised text. "kitna" reads as Hindi, "enna" as Tamil, "ki khoborer" as Bengali.

Native scripts are the easy case. Romanised text is harder, and this is the one to watch: a short message like "ok" carries almost no signal. When it is not sure, it falls back to the language you set as default rather than guessing.

Setting it up

1. Open DM Templates.
2. Write one template per language you care about — start with two.
3. Tag each template with its language.
4. Turn on auto-detect in the automation settings.
5. Save, then test by messaging yourself in each language.

Why it matters more than it sounds

Replying in a follower’s own language generally lands better than defaulting to English — it removes a small friction at exactly the moment somebody is deciding whether to buy. Hinglish does the most work of all nine, because it is what people genuinely type: "price kya hai bhai".

Common questions

What if the detection is wrong?

You can override it per automation, or set a default fallback language.

Can I use slang and regional terms?

Yes. Bhai, didi, anna, boss — all of it works, and using it is usually better than being formal.

Ready to answer in your audience’s language? Start free. All 9 languages are included on every plan, including the free one.