App Store Keyword Research for the Indian Market
One storefront, two languages in active use, and a fast-growing app market
English dominates App Store search, but not completely
India's App Store search skews heavily English for most mainstream categories, especially technology, productivity, business, and finance apps, reflecting the language most urban smartphone users default to for app discovery.
Hindi and code-switched terms (Hindi words written in Latin script, mixed with English, sometimes called Hinglish) carry real, separate search volume in categories closer to everyday life: entertainment, some shopping and lifestyle apps, and religious or cultural-content apps in particular.
India's App Store market has grown quickly and is not lightly contested in popular categories, despite the country's average App Store revenue per user being lower than Western markets — competition for popular English-language terms can still run high.
Deciding when Hindi or Hinglish terms are worth the metadata space
Default to English for the primary keyword set in most professional and utility categories, since that's where the bulk of India's App Store search volume for those categories actually sits.
Score Hindi and Hinglish variants as secondary candidates for categories where cultural or everyday-life relevance is high — a well-chosen Hindi or Hinglish term can carry meaningful, lower-difficulty demand that an English-only keyword set misses entirely.
Avoid assuming Hindi covers the whole non-English opportunity — India has other major regional languages (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and more) with their own App Store search behavior, which is a separate research question beyond Hindi and English.
What a straight translation misses
Register, dialect, and script adjustments worth checking before you reuse one market's list in another.
- English carries the majority of App Store search volume in India for most professional and tech categories.
- Hindi and Hinglish (Hindi in Latin script, mixed with English) carry real secondary demand, concentrated in lifestyle, entertainment, and cultural-content categories.
- Regional languages beyond Hindi (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and others) represent a further, separate localization opportunity not covered by an English-plus-Hindi keyword set.
Frequently asked questions
- Should an app localize into Hindi for the Indian App Store, or is English enough?
- For most professional and utility categories, English alone captures the majority of search demand. For lifestyle, entertainment, or culturally-specific categories, scoring Hindi and Hinglish terms as a secondary pass often surfaces real, lower-difficulty demand worth the metadata space.
- Is India's App Store market easy to rank in because average revenue per user is lower than the US?
- Not necessarily. Lower average revenue per user doesn't mean lower competition — popular categories in India's fast-growing app market can carry difficulty comparable to other large markets. Score the actual terms rather than assuming lower difficulty from market size alone.
Other languages
- SpanishOne language, at least eight storefronts, and real vocabulary differences between themRead more
- FrenchFrance, Belgium, Switzerland, and Quebec don't share one keyword listRead more
- GermanGermany, Austria, and Switzerland share a language and not much else on difficultyRead more
- PortugueseBrazilian and European Portuguese are close in writing, far apart in usageRead more
- JapaneseA single large storefront with its own script mix and its own metadata conventionsRead more
- KoreanHangul search behavior and a market that rewards fast metadata iterationRead more
- ChineseSimplified and Traditional Chinese are different keyword sets in different storefrontsRead more
- ArabicRight-to-left text, Modern Standard Arabic, and real dialect variation across eight storefrontsRead more
- ItalianA single storefront with its own vocabulary conventions and moderate competitionRead more
- RussianCyrillic script search, and secondary Russian-speaking audiences beyond Russia itselfRead more
- TurkishA large, fast-growing single storefront with distinct vowel-harmony spelling patternsRead more
- DutchThe Netherlands and Flemish Belgium, with high English fluency complicating the keyword mixRead more
- Indonesian & MalayTwo closely related languages, two large Southeast Asian storefronts, real vocabulary drift between themRead more
- Nordic LanguagesFour small storefronts, near-universal English fluency, and four separate native languagesRead more
- PolishA large Central European storefront with moderate competition and its own case-driven grammarRead more
- VietnameseA fast-growing single storefront with tonal-diacritic spelling that search treats as meaningfulRead more
- ThaiA single storefront with its own script and no spaces between wordsRead more
- HebrewA right-to-left script, a small population, and a disproportionately active app marketRead more
- UkrainianCyrillic script, a distinct language from Russian, and a market that has shifted since 2022Read more
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