Bharti Softbank’s Hike messaging application is proudly boasting about crossing 20 million users just under four months after it hit the 15 million mark with regards to Indian and international fans. If you want to compare the numbers to what is arguably the world’s most popular messenger service, then WhatsApp had 430 million users in January 2014.
At the same time, Hike has features that are unique to it and it’s a free app too. But first, 20 million loyalists is not a figure to turn up your nose at and the company is reveling in achieving this milestone. The application was launched in December 2012 and claims to have attracted 5 million users within 4 months. It was around this time that Bharti Softbank announced that it would be backing the messaging tool with $7 million in investment.
A couple of very handy facilities offered by Hike include Hidden Mode, Big File Transfer and an offline feature. The first mentioned allows you to keep chats from being seen by other people by locking them with passwords and no one would even know that there are hidden messages on your handset. Big File Transfer permits you to send or receive files as large as 100MB right through the messenger application.
For all those times friends claimed to have run out of data and thus been unable to see your messages, the Hike messaging detects the potential receiver’s offline status and sends your note via SMS. And if they reply, the text gets back to you via the messaging application’s interface itself. There’s also a two way chat theme element which let’s you change the Hike background on your phone as well as the receiver’s device.
Though Hike has international users too, 90% of its base is from India and 80% of audiences from this country are under the age of 25 years. You can download the app for Windows Phone, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Symbian devices.