While browsing, I came to an excellent blog about global market development. David Daniels has talked about changing company name to the local language in his post titled, "Localize Your Company Name". He has talked about Google's recent move to change its name in China and adopt a Chinese name for its business operations. Undoubtedly, this has good prospect in China or else Google would not make such a move. After reading the post by David Daniels, I thought about South Asia in this regard. Will localization of the company help your company substantially in South Asia?
Well, the first thing is that South Asia is very diverse- much more diversified than China. Think of India, there is language that is spoken by more than 50% of the population. So, if you want to diversify your company name which language to select? Will you select a Hindi name? Then in South Asia, Bangla (Bengali) language has perhaps more speakers than Hindi. In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, language can be a very emotional issue as there is more than one major language in each of the country. So, if you adopt one language then your risk alienating the speakers of other languages. In fact, discontentment over language was the major reason behind the breakup of Pakistan in 1971 (Bangladesh was created). Because of the tension among speakers of different languages English serve the purpose of official works in both India and Pakistan and also English acts as the medium of communication among speakers of different languages. English language has the 'prestige' tag with itself and historically the British ruled here for more than 150 years.
Thus, I feel that localization of your company's name in South Asia can backfire instead of giving extra leverage. However, if your company is focused on just the market of speakers of just one particular language then it is not a problem and can be an added advantage. Egyptian telecom giant Orascom bought a Bangladeshi mobile phone company and changed its name to ' Banglalink'.
My final word is that localization of company name in South Asia is not a significant matter unless you are targeting the speakers of just one language.
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