Keeping in mind the needs of instant messaging in purely Indian mobile users, Hike messenger with its designs has attained an enormous growth of 300 per cent growth in the last 9 months, said Saif Attari, Head of Business Development.
Talking to media persons here on Wednesday, Attari said that having started in the year 2012, Hike has around 1.5 crore and around 80 per cent users in the country. Sharing unique features of Hike, Attari said that one of Hike’s key India specific features is ‘Hike Offline’, which allows users to connect with friends who do not have smartphones / data connectivity via Free SMS. This feature is critical in India because till date, feature phones account for more than three-quarters of the overall phone market. Hike is now offering unlimited SMS to its users. The more you chat on Hike, the more free SMS you get.
Amongst other very popular Indian-youth specific features, is the ability to pick and choose whom one shows their ‘last-Seen’ and ‘Status Updates’. No other IM app gives their users this level of flexibility and the feature is unique to Hike as others are not providing such feature. A two-way chat theme is also unique feature which changes the theme of the other user in chat. Hike is available across networks and across platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry, Nokia Symbian S40 and Nokia Symbian S60.