Tech and e-comm giant Amazon's cloud-based voice assistant Alexa is creating a lot of noise in India. It is in direct competition with Google Home and Apple SIRI HomePod and in fact, India is the fourth country where Amazon has brought its smart gadgets. In order to promote the new product, the brand is actively advertising on television and on the other mediums under the campaign #AskAlexa.

According to an interview with afaqs, Ravi Desai, director Mass and Brand marketing, Amazon India cited that with the advancement of technology, like reducing broadband rates, higher speeds and greater data capabilities, it is a great time to launch Alexa in the country.  Reportedly, Amazon is working towards customizing Alexa in India, considering the huge traffic India generates. Like catering to the common Indian interest and with the exact diction, you can hear chants like '‘Sachin… Sachin’ or the recitations of the Gayatri Mantra. If your hands are tied up, while doing something, Alexa can help you to book an Ola, add milk to your shopping list or play sad songs, if you just had a breakup.

Watch Amazon Alexa's latest ads here:

According to a Forbes report, Amazon is hiring 1,147 people just for its Alexa business. The report highlights that this number is higher than what Google is hiring for technical and product roles across its Alphabet group of companies including YouTube and Waymo. It surely looks that Amazon is betting big on the smartphone speaker market and it was the first major company to come with a smart speaker and has almost 70 percent market share in the US.

Talking about the pricing of the devices, the Amazon Echo Dot (the smallest device) will come at Rs 4,499, Amazon Echo (standard version) will cost Rs 9,999 and Amazon Echo Plus (larger speaker than Echo) is priced at Rs 14,999. The e-comm major has recently been focusing a lot in the Indian market. Amazon launched the Prime Video service in the country in 2016 to attract customers with the latest movies and original content and build stickiness on its platform.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 29, 2018 04:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).