Keep your friends close with “hike”

BANGALORE, INDIA: hike messenger is a free messaging application that was launched in December, 2012. Just four months after launching, hike messenger crossed four million users, and is one of the fastest growing messaging apps globally.

hike has recently launched a re-vamped version of its BB app for OS 5,6,7. The new version is simpler and faster, and is getting great reviews as it climbs up the charts.

hike was built with the Indian market in mind, meaning it provides some special features for its Indian consumers. To make messaging more contextual, emoticons such as bus, auto, chai, old-monk, samosa and many more have been added, allowing the youth to express their daily lives more accurately, and in a more fun manner.

Free SMS has also been added as a feature as not every youth is on a smartphone or has a handy data plan. With hike, one can communicate with all friends, even with those on feature phones and without data connectivity. The free SMS feature is responsible for as much as 20 percent of hike's messaging traffic.

One of the biggest issues among users regarding messaging apps is the "Last Seen" feature. Everyone is able to know when a user was last using the app. Most feel that this is a massive violation of privacy.

As messaging is a very private affair, hike wanted to build a feature in which the control of privacy is completely in the hands of its users. hike is the only IM app that not only gives its users the option to show or hide when they last used the app through "Last Seen", but also empowers them to choose who they wish to show their "Last Seen" time stamp, profile picture updates and status updates to.

The hike application is designed to keep close friends close. One can share status and profile picture updates and "Last Seen" time stamps within a closer friend circle. The "Friends" list is a place where users can spark more conversations between a chosen few, whilst being a part of a bigger phonebook social graph.

India is a diverse and unique market, and established players with roots in smartphone-evolved markets that have been around for years are being attracted by the potential growth in the mobile-internet space. People in India are accessing the Internet for the first time on mobile phones, and their needs and demands are very distinct.

As a company based out of India, hike is able to catch the pulse of the local market, and aims to continue building apps for the Indian consumer. Hike can be seen as the BBM for this generation. It has the richness of what a messaging app should offer with a layer of privacy to keep close friends even closer.