Apple’s Siri has competition in India, and her name is Aisha

Watch your back, Siri – there’s a new kid in town.

On Friday, Micromax, India’s fourth largest mobile phone company by market share, introduced a new smartphone with an application that takes a page out of Apple’s book: it’s called, Aisha. That is, Artificial Intelligence Speech Handset Assistant (not to be confused with Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface).

Micromax’s A50 Superphone Ninja can be yours for about Rs5,000 ($95) – just one ninth of what you’d pay for the iPhone 4S with a contract from Airtel. Around these parts, they call that frugal engineering.

With that users get a dual-SIM touchscreen phone that runs Android’s 2.3.6 Gingerbread operating system on a 650MHz processor (compared to the 4S’s 800MHz) and a 2.0 megapixel camera.

But Aisha’s the selling point. She needs an internet connection through which she can look up movie reviews or make calls or answer simple questions, according to the company’s release, just like Siri.

Still, Aisha is Indian, and so she can also look up your horoscope, which will come in handy if you are searching for a spouse – something else Aisha is equipped to help with.

For that, Micromax has tied up with the matchmaking site SimplyMarry.com – simply tell Aisha you’re looking for a bride or groom and she’ll show you the profiles of potential mates (complete with questions that help you choose which caste you’re looking for).

Unlike Scottish, Siri has always been able to understand the Indian accent – so Aisha doesn’t have a leg up there (though she was designed specifically with the Indian accent in mind).

But tell Siri you’re looking for a wife, and what does she say?

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘I’m looking for a wife’.”

Of course you don’t, Siri. But Aisha does.