Desi messenger Hike gets a boost from ad campaign

The Bharti SoftBank-backed Hike instant messenger app is seeing an instant reaction to its mass media advertising campaign. While it is not the first to advertise, and follows the likes of Japan's Line and China's WeChat, the app's ranking on Google Play store is only set to get fortified with it. Kavin Bharti Mittal, the son of the Bharti Airtel Founder-chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, is heading the enterprise, after striking a joint-venture with the Japanese mobile operator SoftBank.

The campaign, whose first TV installment was launched last week (with six more ads to follow in the next eight weeks) has been running on other media such as radio and movie theatres, as well. Mittal says, "Since its launch, the TVC has led to Hike adding new users at the rate of 150,000-200,000 per day."

Though, instant messenger-use does not get dictated by advertising, as the largest, Whatsapp, does not advertise at all. But Hike and its maker claim that by dint of being the first Indian instant messenger, it is quick to incorporate the needs of its core audience. Over 90 per cent of its users are under 25 years of age. Mittal says, they are the primary target as well. "With 400-500 million Indians under the age of 25-years, a product addressing the issues they face would be quick to capture the market."

A HIKE DOWN A LOCAL ROAD

• Privacy: Hide the ‘last seen at’ from others, so that people can’t track the user’s data activity
• Hidden mode: There are times when family members or friends pry into mobile phones for chat, messaging records. This allows users to hide sensitive chats in the app from others.
• Offline mode: Data users in India tend to turn their data reception off intermittently, either to save data charges (90 per cent of connections are still pre-paid) or battery charge. The messenger allows friends to message a user who is offline; she would get it through an SMS and the reply would figure in the sender’s Hike app window

The differentiating features are geared to preserve the privacy of the users. Mittal says, "The youth in their early-20s want to carve out a separate world for themselves even as the old guard doesn't necessarily understand the need for that. It is sort of a grey area. But Hike would help them balance it."

To target a population, most of which is going on to the Internet for the first time through mobile devices, Hike is allowing users to exchange heavy files. The youth's first step may no more be that of opening an email id, but rather communicating on an instant messenger. Hence, when it comes to sharing homework and other files, it allows users to relay files upto 100-MB (five-10 times larger than email attachment sizes).

It has a very large base in tier II and III cities, claims Mittal, for its localised features.

While the largest, Whatsapp, is reported to have around 50 million active users in India, Hike lays claim to around 20 million active users since launch in November, 2013. It is extensively pre-bundled with Micromax and Nokia handsets. The recent mass media campaign follows a second round of funding of $14 million Bharti SoftBank Holdings, earlier this year.