It was an awakening moment! Guess, what? “Hello, English!” is not so different from “Hello, World!” The seemingly intricate process of learning a language, be it to communicate with machines or humans, largely remain the same. Here’s the review of my favorite learning app. It teaches “English” to people in their local language.
Brief history 
CultureAlley was co-founded by the couple Nishant Patni and Pranshu Bhandari Patni just days before their wedding. They had also quit their jobs in Gurgaon and returned to their native, Jaipur, to follow their passion. Nishant Patni is a graduate from IIT Bombay and later did his MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Pranshu Bhandari has worked with Sun Microsystems and Pitney Bowes. It happened during their marriage. The elders in the family found it bewildering that the couple was up to something, unmindful of their marriage preparations. The couple went straight back to their laptops after the wedding to work on the platform. “We told them we were building software. But for the ones who didn’t know what software was, we just said we had started a business. All Marwaris understand that.” says Patni. A few linguists in Mandarin and Spanish were also enrolled online to help design the course.
The tech startup CultureAlley’s “Hello English” was developed out of Jaipur. It became the #1 English learning and speaking app on the Google Play store in India within eight months of launch. The idea of developing the language learning app came to Patni while he was in Shanghai on an exchange programme. He says, “Belonging to a pure vegetarian family, as most Marwaris, I found it extremely hard to explain in Mandarin that I don’t want any fish, eggs, or even chicken broth – things considered veggie by the locals.” Moving back to India, he roped in fiancée Pranshu Bhandari, who had left her job as analyst at Pitney Bowes in Gurgaon, to start developing CultureAlley, a platform that teaches Spanish, Mandarin, English, and a few more languages in playful ways.
According to GSV Advisors, the global language learning market is about $115 billion. US-based market research firm Ambient Insight rightly estimated the global market for digital language learning products will grow to $3.1 billion in 2018. It’s this potential that attracted Tiger Global. In December 2014, Bhandari and Patni met Tiger Global Management managing director Lee Jared Fixel for an hour at New Delhi’s Oberoi Hotel and the deal was sealed. The free app has more than 10 million downloads from the Google Play Store and is rated #4 in top free education. English speaking has become imperative in India as the language instills confidence and boosts self-esteem at the workplace. As for its reach, interestingly, the local officers in the Rajasthan administration have downloaded the app within weeks after the launch.
With $6.1 million (₹36 crore) inflow of funds from Tiger Global Management and other investors such as Sasha Mirchandani of Kae Capital, Rajan Anandan, and Sunil Kalra, the team is looking forward to rope in engineers from colleges in Rajasthan and IITs.
What does the App do, anyway? 
The app addresses the pain point in learning English via English when you do not know the language yet. In irony, this very post tries to reach an audience who could understand English, when ideally it should have been written in a local language to reach the right audience; the native people. (Work in progress)
அது சிறப்பாக அமையும் என நம்புகிறேன்.
This stereotype in learning English the traditional way is no more “cool” especially with learning OTG becoming increasingly popular these days. The app uses to its advantage the fact that people think (talking in your head to yourself) in their native language to understand what something means in the other language. This is exactly why the App supports 22 local languages to learn English.
With numerous tricks to teach not the same old way, every method adopts a whole new approach. Designed particularly for the reluctant learners so that they won’t get bored easily. Students share a learning community and make other students their friends while having fun learning the language. This brings about a healthy competition.
The App icon!
Let’s start with the icon. Red background with the letter “H” in plain white. If you look close enough, you’ll see the single quotation marks at the top and bottom. Well, that’s something for a concept. Gradient and shadow effects add appropriate richness.
Decent enough for twenty-eighteen.
As of the App, its unusally brightly lit. Yellow is just about everywhere. Okay, I’m talking no more about the UI. Let’s just say what we have here is an ergonomically designed app without much focus on the aesthetics in few areas.
Deep research on color typography got it too serious with the look? We’ll never know.
Features 
Truth be told. The app kills it here. It’s as if their territory and they rule the place with all their might!
- Vernacular languages: Learn English from 22 other languages.
I also learned some interesting old words back in my native language . Those moments were stunning! - Rich content and “works offline!”
that’s a +1 from me! - Numerous fun ways to learn.
You’ll never sleep in this classroom!- Daily News – Introduces new words by delivering daily news (real-world usage) which interests learners with what’s in trend.
- Tip of the day – Introduces new words with images and description.
- Games – Students can read, listen, write, and speak the language into the App. The AI does all the heavy-lifting in assisting the students to perform well.
Games that target Indians love for chai and gossip over tea-shop bench holds learner’s attention. - Word of the Day – Chat window with daily new words with real-life examples, news tidbits, and in-context usage of the word. Students receive push notifications the next day to recall the word with another example. They can also ask away their doubts directly to teachers in the chat room.
- Awards/rewards – Keeps students motivated with coins.
- Progress report – Tracks the learner’s performance and highlights areas which needs improvement.
- Social connect – Team up friends, create chat groups to discuss, set learning goals and work together.
Remember group studies? Feel old, yet? - Helpline – English experts (real humans, not bots!) respond to your queries in a helpline chatroom.
- Dictionary – The dictionary has 100,000 words with usage examples and pronunciation. This helps in understanding the tone differences between written and verbal communication of the same word. The AI assistant helps in getting a good grip at oral communication.
- Daily lessons & homework – Classroom has around 475 lessons. Every-day session teaches sentence creation and dialogue delivery. Related material is given for homework.
- Conversational English – Speak into the App and let the app respond to you. The students learn conversational aspects of the language through this feature. Conversely, the AI learns about the students’ preference, their comfort zone, and gradually challenge them to improve more.
It felt like a subtle way to improve grammar and vocabulary in communication. Worth a try! - Learn from the news articles – Students read an article and answer the questions that follow (more like current-news comprehension).
Salient feature – If you need to know the meaning of a word while you read news articles, you can select the word to fetch it from the dictionary.
Without leaving the news article!
- Many of these learning methods has the timeout feature. Lessons, homework, and word games have to be completed within 24 hours to win coins.
- Unlock premium features with coins – This part gets exciting! You can unlock premium features with special coins won from challenges which are smartly designed to test what was learned.
- It even claims to offer jobs in BPOs and call centers upon successful completion of the premium courses.
In summary, the App adopts various ways to teach how to read, speak, and write English. They go by what the current trend is – because most of their audiences are first-time language learners.
Wren and Martin, or literature is an overkill today – yes?
The user engagement with the content is peachy. Most importantly, it’s never boring. Of course, learning asks for practice. So, practice is replaced with “fun” here. This is truly why “Hello English” stands out from the crowd.
User onboarding 
- Choose your English course:
Select a language through which you want to learn English. Twenty-two vernacular languages supported by the App. You can choose to learn English from Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarathi, Urdu, Assamese, Arabic, Bangladeshi, Bengali, Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, Nepali, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Thai, and Turkish.
- Help yourselves:
Your profile picture says if you are a school/college student, or a working professional, or a senior citizen. The App optimizes lessons according to your age and needs. Why? Because, a Students’ requirement differs from working population in terms of their learning environment and professional growth.
- Why do you want to learn English?
1. To secure a good job.
2. For competitive examinations.
3. To travel abroad.
4. To teach my kids.
5. For social bonding.
6. To enjoy Hollywood movies.
Tailor made to suit your needs.
- Give your profile a name and describe your nature of work.
- You will have to take a test for the App to recommend a best starting point of your course. I scored 18/20 and was advised to start with “Lesson-326”.Quiz test and progress bar, still a better love story than Twilight.
- Your account is created only at the end of the intro. Big deal?
The user gets enough time to judge the app’s worth and choose to continue his association with it by creating an account. This made immense sense to me because it clearly establishes the fact that the user has the final say. Moreover, this shows the acceptance of the fact and appreciates users time, effort, and most importantly, privacy.
Even better with GDPR, don’t you think?
Not to forget the deep and interactive intro which was offered much to the advantage of the user.
The first screen not asking for your email address is a big relief per-se.
Cons 
The App is not void of cons. These are the few things I would fix first.
- Cluttered user interface.
- User engagement takes a hit because of the UI when compared to the UX. In other words, UI and UX fail to compliment each other.
- Remove/reduce Ads, especially that which affects UX.
Usually a tough call for startups and moreover, “Hello English” is VC funded.
- Users are left in the cold when it comes to learning roadmap. At times, random learning puts off the users and keeps language learners in dark for the most part.
Remember this feeling after a weekend party? – “Not sure what’s next.”
The App inspection 
- Homepage: homework’s here!
Displays today’s homework from lessons taken and the amount of time left to finish them. Other sections include lessons, training, dictionary, premium features (offers paid tidbits to prepare for real jobs).
- Premium features can be unlocked with accumulated coins!
Alright, alright! Not with “Bitcoins” yet.
- Top bar: Displays the coins that I won, my community rank, and also the coins remaining to be won from lessons not taken.
- User profile:
- Top bar: My world rank and top 10 ranks in the world, my city rank and top 10 ranks in my city, and my rank among my friends!
Healthy competition? Unless I get obsessed and answer all questions wrong grabbing my friend’s phone!
- Top bar: My world rank and top 10 ranks in the world, my city rank and top 10 ranks in my city, and my rank among my friends!
- Bottom: Shows available coins, my progress, Fb & Gplus connect links.
User feedback 
What do I think as a reviewer?
Put simply. Not everyone knows everything in a language which is ever-evolving.
One. It is difficult to keep pace with.
Two, there are thousands of crowdsourced words in English and the meaning varies a number of times with context.
Three, as an international communication tool, it’s hard to predict what’s next and be in trend when billions of people contribute to it continuously.
If an app could stand tall in the App stores with these tough constraints especially under “Educational” category, it is definitely something to think about. Moreover, what stands out with the concept behind “Hello English” is that, people get to compare and learn not just the words but also the cultures. Language and its cultural aspects are taught at the same time.
——————————————–
To: contact@culturealley.com
Date: Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 4:44 PM
Hi Team,
Kudos on the development of Hello English App. I’m sure it has the potential to educate many students and help them learn English easily from their local language. Congratulations!
————-
From: Hello English <contact@culturealley.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 2:09 PM
Hello,
Thank you for writing in and appreciating us! Can you share the screenshot of both of these errors?
Mridvika
————-
Hi Mridvika,
Thanks for reminding. I should have sent the screenshots along with my feedback. Please find them here in the attachments.
Best,
Vishwan
————-
The issue was fixed a few days later. I must admit I was sad for not getting a reply stating that it was fixed.
I might have cried a little…
Did I just say that aloud?
Feedback from first-time English learners
- “They use daily basis, examples or sentences to make you understand the literal as well as their cultural meanings, they have word meaning games which help you excercise your mind to think fast, without converting it into your native language and that is the best part, if we stop converting the language in our mind, fluency is achievable in no time.”
- “There’s an inbuilt dictionary hosting 10,000 words which will be helpful to know the meaning of a particular word. It not only foucs on your communication skills but also reflects good in writing with continuous usage of the App. It has sets of sentences in every chapter which can be used in specific situation – situational comments.”
- “Hello English is different. I liked the concept they have implied in their app, so it motivates learners and its coins system makes them work hard in order to unlock more difficult lessons, their explanations are very good and detailed so one can understand the logic behind using any concept, they cover daily uses sentences which is very helpful for beginners. If students don’t understand they can memorize them and can use them, it does not teach literal meaning of the sentence which you have in your local language, it always teach you cultural meaning which an english speaker going to use for one particular sentence, so in one word very useful app for everyone.”
CultureAlley and their business language
Three simple points about CultureAlley and what they do.
- Achieves cultural efficacy and bonding by teaching international languages in people’s native language.
- Started as a mobile-first initiative.
- Monetization is through in-app purchases, ads, and premium services for payment.
“Hello English” – Stats
- Best of 2016 app – Google Play and India’s best mobile app – 2017
- Editor’s Choice 2017 by Google Play – only 25 apps globally were a part of this coveted list
- 35 million learners from 55,000 cities and towns have used the platform to learn English
- Google’s Best of 2016 Apps
- Awarded as Top Developer by Google Play (2015)
- World’s 3rd most rated educational application with 3.5 lakh reviews: average rating of 4.5 / 5
- Awarded ‘India’s Most Innovative App’ for 2016 (and 2014) – by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
- Available for speakers of 22 vernacular languages
- Available on Android, iOS and Web platform
- Featured in The Economic Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, NDTV, The Hindu, Tech In Asia, Times of India, Livemint etc.
- Backed by Tiger Global Management, 500 Startups, Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India), and Sasha Mirchandani (Kae Capital).
Links to click before bidding Goodbye!
- Hello, English for business – The power of India’s #1 English learning platform, now for your employees. Customized English learning, detailed analytics, leader boards, assessments, co-branding, and more. It comes in three different pricing plans.https://helloenglish.com/businessPlans.jsp#usd
https://helloenglish.com/forBusinesses - “Hello English” for Android, iOS, and Windows.
- “Hello English” Youtube channel.
- Finally, here’s “Hello, English” and CultureAlley.
Disclaimer — I’m in no way involved with any of the “CultureAlley” or “Hello English” business, nor marketing their product for commercial benefits. I’m just another consumer of their product and have grown to like it more with time because of the dedication showed to the craft of product development. The only intention of this post is to share the educational value of the app so that it helps people who are looking out to learn English the easy way. This review of the product is completely personal, written after extensive use and some online research of the product spoken about.
Curious Camp 