All Posts in Hike

|In: India|Last Updated:

Hike Messenger, India’s only home-grown chat application, announced the launch of the “Great Indian Sticker Challenge” [GISC]; inviting designers from all over the country to participate in creating stickers for the app. In August last year, Hike announced that its users were sending over 3 Billion stickers a month. Of the 10 Billion+ messaging volumes per month, stickers contribute to over 30% of the traffic. In its quest to scale up the choice of stickers & yet have the best content, hike launches a unique crowd-sourcing model that calls Indian designers to build for India.

Hike-Logo

The design challenge offers a set-up similar to a design studio virtually, wherein illustrators, graphic designers, animators, caricaturist, cartoonist can come together to showcase their talent to over 35 Million+ users and also win cash prizes of up to Rs. 20 Lakhs.

In addition, every short-listed entry will be rewarded Rs. 10,000 and will be given artist credit on hike messenger for their respective sticker pack. Furthermore, they will be empanelled for future work of Hike Limited. India’s top design colleges and institutes such as NIFT, PEARL Academy, Arena Multimedia and MAAC amongst many others have encouraged their students to participate in this contest.

Commenting on the design challenge, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO, Hike Messenger said

Stickers have played a significant role in transforming the messaging experience. Today we see 3 Billion stickers exchange on hike. We believe that the ‘Great Indian Sticker Challenge’ will not just bring together the crème la crème from the design industry for the contest but will also give a chance to thousands of talented designers to find a new way of earning recognition for their creative talent.

The Great Indian Sticker Challenge is a platform open to everyone who can design graphic illustrations, irrespective of their age or academic and professional credentials. The registration and submission is open until March 31, 2015 at http://gisc.hike.in. The winners can grab prizes up to Rs. 20 Lacs and the results will be announced on April 15, 2015.

Additional information

Participate in the GISC – http://gisc.hike.in
Download the app at – http://get.hike.in/
Hike Blog for more details on the new features – http://hike.in/blog

|In: startups|Last Updated:

Hike-Messenger

Hike messenger, India’s only homegrown chat application, introduces free ‘HikeCalls’.

The introduction of this feature will allow hike users to call each other for free, over 2G, 3G & Wi-Fi and across the globe in over 200 countries. The introduction of hike calls has come in within a month of hike making it’s first acquisition – a free calling app – Zip Phone.

Hike calls are optimized to consume very little data, giving its users more calling minutes per MB of data. Given that a majority of the mobile-internet users of India are still experimenting with data & are not on a high-bandwidth connection, this optimization becomes critical for the Indian market.

Commenting on the launch of the calling feature, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike messenger

While building free hike calls, we kept two things in mind. Firstly, India is a very cost sensitive market and as a result we have ensured that our service is extremely efficient on data. It means our users can pack in more minutes per MB when calling on hike.

We have made hike’s free calling service available globally in over 200+ countries. Hikers from India can now speak with their loved ones in India & across the world for free.

The free hike calling feature has been launched in beta on Android, which contributes to over 90% of hike’s user base. The iOS and Windows versions are slated to release by the end of this quarter.

Some of the screenshots of “Hike Calls” are below:

HikeCalling

Current User-Base & Funding

Launched in December 2012, Hike has over 35M users as in August, 2014 and has raised $86M from Tiger Global & BSB till date. The app also boasts of a fairly young user base with over 90% of its users being under the age of 25 and residing in India.

The chat application has localized features, which are developed keeping in mind the infrastructural and cultural requirements such as Hike Offline – lets you message your friends even when they’re offline, Hidden Mode – allows users to hide their private chats with a password, Regional Stickers – helps users express more in their own language, amongst many others.

Do give “Hike Calls” & share across your feedback in the comments section…

Additional information

You can download the app at – http://get.hike.in/

For more information, please visit the Hike Blog