1. Planet K
Solving the Language Problem:
How Global Companies Can
Reach a World of Customers

2. Kamusi is the Swahili word for “dictionary”. Our mission:
1. Collect every word in every language
2. Share every word
Planet K

3. Planet K is our idea to translate useful information that is frequently
repeated, like , , and , into hundreds of languages.
• Companies prepare their products once in their home language
• Customers read the information in their mother tongues

4. • The company puts a QR code on their product
• The customer reads the information on their mobile device

5. • The company shares BIG information in a small space
• The customer learns better information about the product

6. • The company makes one label for hundreds of markets
• The customer reads information about hundreds of products in their own language

7. There is a local company we thought we’d pitch the idea to.
Nestle has:
• More than 2000 brands
• Nearly $100 billion sales
• Operations in 200 countries
Might it be helpful to them to have in the of
their ?
2000 brands
x 50 packages/brand
x 100 terms/ package
x 200 languages
2,000,000,000 words

8. We can show Nestle how Planet K could ease the challenge
• “Milk” is “milk” on any package
• “Milk” in another language will
be that word on any package
• 5000 repeating terms can be condensed
to just five weeks of work per language
But can we convince a BIG company to put QR codes on its
products to offer low-income market customers more information?
All brands
x all packages
x 5,000 unique terms
(@25/hr= 200 hours/lang)
x 200 languages
1,000,000 reusableterms

9. Guess what?
They already do!
This is a can of Nestle Milkmaid
Sweetened Condensed Milk.
It is sold in Sri Lanka.
If you scan the QR code on your phone,
the next page shows what you will see.

10. You see:
• A crisp website
• Instructions
• Nutrition
• Recipes
• Social information
In

11. Ethnologue estimates
for Sri Lanka:
• 20,000,000 people
• 16,000,000 speak
Sinhala
• 4,000,000 speak
Tamil
• 90% are literate
• 10% speak some
English
http://www.ethnologue.com/country/LK/languages

12. Ethnologue estimates
for Sri Lanka:
• 20,000,000 people
• 16,000,000 speak
Sinhala
• 4,000,000 speak
Tamil
• 90% are literate
• 10% speak some
English
http://www.ethnologue.com/country/LK/languages
The Planet K concept:
• Company gets repeated
terms translated to the
national
have product
information
• Accessed through QR
codes that the company
has already invested in

13. These detailed translations
, for two reasons:
1. Methods – they scrape digital sources for
apparent matches. This somewhat works for
French and German, but not much beyond
2. Data – most terms for most languages have
never been collected, so they don’t exist in
any way computers can use
We ask for the words right from the people
who speak them.
Then we align them (because “truffle” could
be a fungus or a chocolate, and you really
don’t want to mix up ideas like that).
We can get you .
We demonstrate it for 4 languages below.
We could do it for .
* Some script rendering errors introduced
by Adobe image editing software
* Some script rendering errors introduced
by Adobe image editing software

14. Any language
Any product
Any market
Translated once
Used everywhere
* Some script rendering errors introduced
by Adobe image editing software
* Some script rendering errors introduced
by Adobe image editing software

15. Any language
Any product
Any market
Translated once
Used everywhere