It goes without saying that the mobile messaging and calling app market is indeed crowded, but that’s not stopping another contender from entering the ring. A service called Hike, which launched last December and has crossed 5 million registered users last month spanning India, which houses 60% of Hike’s user base, Germany, and the Middle East, intends to challenge WhatsApp in the mobile messaging game.
Hike raised $7 million with an investment from Bharti SoftBank (BSB), who incubated the service, which functions like most messaging apps as a replacement for SMS text and is currently available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and S60 devices. BSB’s aggressive plans hope to put Hike in a stronger position by the end of 2013 with a user base four times the size it is now, putting pressure on local competitors like WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, WeChat, and LINE. The opportunity for local services is one that Kevan Bharti Mittal, head of product and strategy at BSB, is confident about.
“Given our rapid growth over the last four months, it’s quite clear that there is room for a messaging app that caters to local needs of the market,” says Bharti Mittal, 25-year-old son of Bharti chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal according to The Next Web.
He explains that the company has taken a “solid” second place behind WhatsApp in India, but he believes that ”a giant can be toppled” and points to a number of localized features that Hike has developed with India in mind, highlighting its “Hike2SMS” feature in particular along with its “beautiful user experience”.
Hike2SMS gives users a total of 100 free SMS messages each month to use in order to chat with friends on other services, similar to what you can do with Cardup and the recently-launched just.me. Recipients can reply to the messages just like any other SMS. The service also features status updates and moods as of its latest version launched last week.
“We want to push the boundaries on Instant Messaging [and] we think of messaging as a communication channel. And around a channel of communication one can a see whole load of context. Innovation in messaging has stagnated for some time. We’ve gone from SMS to MMS (which failed miserably) to Instant Messaging where one can share photos, videos, audio files etc, but that’s where it’s stopped,” he says.
While a number of companies — Kik, Line, Kakao Talk, Cubie and more — have turned to content for revenue opportunities, Hike is not yet looking to monetize its content — although Bharti Mittal admits it is something they “will definitely explore” in the future.
Bharti Mittal also suggested that deals with carriers and OEMs could be in the work. Could we see the types of agreements similar to what we’ve seen from Nimbuzz with Singapore carriers in the past? Bharti Mittal doesn’t say exactly, but it’s safe to say Hike is definitely an application we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears on.