Google has created a new app exclusively for the Indian market that it will roll out very soon.

The new app has been called neighbourly. The app has been designed to be a  local social network with the intention of providing answers to questions that people often ask or have in relation to their immediate surroundings. Such questions include the area of a city or a neighbourhood to find the best street food or a car repair shop that is reliable.

Other users or neighbours using the app would be the source of the answers.

The service has already been launched in the India capital city of New Delhi, as well as in the Southern city of Bangalore which is also known as the tech hub of the country. Google said in a blog post on Wednesday that the service would be rolled out within the next few weeks in some of the largest cities in the country which includes Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.

“We know that most of life happens within 1 [kilometer, 0.6 miles] from home or work and that many information needs are local,” Neighbourly’s engineering manager Arnold Binas said in the blog post. “We’ve also found that when finding local information, people prefer to ask or discuss with another person — whether that’s a friend, family member, or neighbour.”

The app will provide answers to a large number of common local queries which are raised by users and source the answers from other users with knowledge of the issues from the neighbourhood area.

In May, a trial run of the app was conducted by Google in Mumbai and in the next few months, it also included six other cities in the trial. And Since June, Neighbourly has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. And in the cities where it isn’t yet available, half a million people have joined a waiting list, Google said.

Neighbourly would be available in eight Indian languages in addition to English.

This launch reflects the efforts of Google to take advantage of the vast and fast-growing internet spread in India. While the number of people who are linked online in India is just over 500 million people, the rest of the market still comprises of more than 900 million people.

In recent years, a number of services and features have been launched in India. Such launches in India include an offline version of its video platform YouTube. And bank loans were made available for Indian users through its digital payments app earlier this year.

For now, Neighbourly (spelled with a “u” the way Indians spell it), is not just “India-first,” it’s “India only.”

“We are currently focused on expanding the app in India, and don’t have any immediate plans to roll this out to other markets,” a Google India spokesperson said.

(Adapted from Money.CNN.com)

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