Amazon finally brings Alexa calling to India

Amazon was the first company to launch smart speakers in India last November. The company gave away attractive offers with the launch like free Prime membership and discounts. These offers ran till the year-end and saw a great response from the customers.

Now, the company is moving forward to launch Alexa calling in India. Starting this week, the new update for Alexa is rolling out which brings the support for Alexa calling and SMS in India. To use the feature, users need to set it up from the Alexa mobile app and give it permission to scan contacts. Once done, Alexa will then identify contacts who have Alexa connected to their mobile phone. Once done, it will give you a list of people you can call using Alexa. To call, the user needs to say Alexa call and the name of the person. You can also use the same steps to send someone a SMS.

Apart from the call and SMS feature, Alexa also got the Drop-in feature with the latest update. For those who don’t know, drop in will allow you to use Alexa as an intercom which will allow users to call someone in the other room. The feature is handy if you’ve got more than one Alexa device in two different places in your house. For example, you can say “Alexa drop-in on the living room” from your bedroom and just send the message. You can also use this feature to broadcast message to your friends on the condition that they have allowed you to do so.

With Alexa-to-Alexa calling and messaging, you can easily make and receive calls between supported Echo devices or the free Alexa app on your smartphone, hands-free. No scrolling or searching through hundreds of contacts on your mobile. Your contacts will hear your name when they get incoming calls on their Echo devices (and also see it on the Alexa App), so they know who is calling.

– Amazon

Amazon has also announced the ability to add family members to your Alexa device so that everyone can use the device and get results customized according to them. For this to work, everyone needs to download the Alexa mobile app and set up their profile to get results tailored to them.

Finally, with the latest update you can play music on multiple Alexa devices at the same time. For this, you will have to create groups with two or more Echo devices by naming the group, say “everywhere”. Once the group is created, say “Alexa, play Despacito everywhere” and the music will play on all the devices in the certain group.

It has been 4 months since Amazon launched Alexa in India and over 1,000 new skills has been added to Alexa. Indian customers do things ranging from ordering food using Zomato or Swiggy to booking an Ola or Uber. Other features include buying things using Amazon Pay or CoD, Routine and Translation support.

If you do still don’t own an Alexa device, you have three available starting from cheapest Echo Dot (4,499 INR) to Echo (9,999 INR) and the expensive Echo Plus (14,999). All of them are available on Amazon India or in major retail outlets.