Amazon Alexa+ launched in India, it is smarter, chattier and for now free for select users

It took Amazon a while but the smarter and chattier Alexa+ is now available in India. Although, for now the service will be available only to select users, and those who purchase a new compatible Amazon Echo device. Also, for now the service is free. But at the time of wider availability, Alexa+ will be free for Amazon Prime users and will cost Rs 2000 per month for everyone else.

The new service, where the + sign is the key part, is a revamped Alexa service. Unlike the previous virtual assistant, which was built on top of older machine learning technologies, the new one is powered by modern AI systems like Anthropic Claude.

“Alexa+ is not just an upgrade of the original Alexa. We kept the name and the vision, but everything else is entirely new,” Michele Butti, vice president for Alexa International at Amazon, told India Today Tech in an exclusive conversation ahead of the launch. “It's a new architecture, new technology that is based on large language models and generative AI. We also kept the name because also while the technology is entirely new, it doesn't start from zero. We have more than 600 million Amazon devices that are used today by customers around the world to access Alexa. And we need to ensure that what they already enjoyed will keep working on the new Alexa Plus.”

More significantly, says Butti, the vision of the original Alexa as well as Alexa+ is the same, that is serving the needs of its users as a virtual assistant in the best possible way. “Our vision is to offer the best personal assistant in the world. (Earlier) we were limited by (available) technology. Now agentic AI (such as Claude) gives us a better chance to get close to that original vision.”

Teena Sidana, country manager for Alexa at Amazon India, tells India Today Tech the service has been tweaked and fine-tuned for Indian use cases, as well as the way Indian consumers interact with Amazon devices and Alexa.

“One of the key features of Alexa+ is how authentically it is Indian,” Sidana told India Today Tech. “We know Indian homes are noisier, have more background chatter. So, the ESR system — the one that recognises sound — is better tuned for the Indian environment in Alexa+ to accurately recognise the conversation instead of catching background noise.”Alexa+ understands Hinglish

The other key feature of Alexa+ in India is its support for colloquial way in which Indians speak, switching between Hindi and English words, or even using references and words that are uniquely Indian. “Code switching is very uniquely Indian. When we have a formal or informal conversation we tend to switch between two languages constantly. Alexa Plus is designed to understand commands like alarm do baje ka set kardo,” says Sidana.

Currently, Alexa+ will support Hindi and English in India, along with the mix that we call Hinglish. Support for regional languages, says Sidana, is still in the works and would be rolled out later. Michele Butti, vice president for Alexa International at Amazon was in India as the company launched Alexa+ here.

In terms of its capabilities, Alexa+ is smarter and chattier compared to vanilla Alexa, thanks to the AI models that now power it. As far as the AI models go, they are a mix of Amazon’s own internal models as well as external models, including from Anthropic. Butti says that depending on the user query and complexity of the task, Alexa+ will automatically choose the best and fastest model from Amazon Bedrock, which is a service that hosts multiple AI models. “The idea is that the customers should get the best possible response (when they use Alexa+),” he says.

Amazon says in India, Alexa+ has been built to work with many services and devices customers already use in their daily life — from smart home control, shopping, meal planning, restaurant reservations, and travel planning, to music discovery and entertainment — all through natural conversation in English, Hindi, and Hinglish.

One key aspect that Amazon is highlighting with Alexa+ is its ability to do shopping for the user, just through voice commands. With Amazon Now available in India, Amazon says users will also be able to order groceries directly by talking to Alexa+ if they choose to do so. In terms of shopping, Alexa+ will also be able to compare products, pricing as well as set alarms on price drops.Privacy guard on the device

With all these conversations happening with a virtual assistant which is much smarter, privacy is one key aspect from a consumer's point of view. Butti says just like Alexa, the new AI assistant too has been built keeping privacy and data sanctity in mind. According to Butti, one of the key privacy features of Alexa+ is a local acoustic tool, which is very small, and is used only to process and recognise the wake word — which is Alexa.

“The device is not listening until it gets awakened by the wake word. And that's actually a sound on which we train a very small acoustic model that is local to the device. When that sound gets detected then the blue light (on the Echo device) goes on, and at that point Alexa is recording and transmitting the voice to the cloud to be processed,” says Butti. If you purchase a new compatible Eco or Fire device, you will automatically get access to Alexa+.

In addition, Amazon says consumers will continue to have access to the Alexa Privacy dashboard that lets them review their interactions, listen to exactly what Alexa heard, review shared attachments, and set voice recording retention preferences.Amazon Alexa+ availability and price in India

As noted earlier, for now, Alexa+ is going to be available to a limited set of users. These are going to be users who are eligible for it and the eligibility can be checked on the Amazon website. Also, everyone who purchases a new eligible Echo or Fire TV device will automatically get access to Alexa+.

Until the wider availability, Alexa+ will be free in India. Once it becomes broadly available, the service will be free only for Amazon Prime members, although not for those who have a Prime Lite or Prime Shopping Edition plan. For consumers, who do not subscribe to the full Prime membership, Alexa+ will cost Rs 2000 per month.- EndsPublished By: Divya BhatiPublished On: Sep 16, 2026 17:08 IST