Hike – Startup Story

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Hike Messenger is an Indian freeware, cross-platform instant messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP) application.

Hike Messenger App got launched by Kavin Bharti Mittal (son of Sunil Mittal, Bharti Airtel) globally on 12-12-12 and was made available in more than 100 countries. Just a few months after the launch, the traffic unexpectedly increased so much that their servers crashed and the App had started catching hold of everyone’s eye. This made Kavin realize that it is time for them to be backed financially to stay firm in the market. It is then, when they raised funds. Soon in June 2013, Hike launched STICKERS, to increase user engagement. They were interesting and catchy and made sure that they got the attention of the youth. Till then Hike didn’t have any marketing strategy in specific and they majorly relied on Word of Mouth. But once the attraction was in place, it launched launch a digital campaign. To keep up with the fast changing market, they also launched two-way chat themes giving a new reason to the users to get attracted to the messenger. After buying US based free voice calling company Zip Phones in 2015, Hike started providing free voice calling over cellular network and WiFi across the globe before WhatsApp by optimizing voice quality while using low bandwidth which packs more minutes per megabyte (MB) of data. It also purchased startups like TinyMogul and Hoppr in the later part of 2015. In June 2020, Hike launched HikeLand, world’s first mobile-first virtual world.