Hoppr and Tiny Mogul Games have been integrated under the Internet company hike messenger, bringing in the games and hyper-local deals to improve on its existing users and also appealing to the new users.
Hike raised $86M from Tiger Global and Bharti SoftBank since its inception in December 2012 and is the first and biggest home grown app by active usage, as per the recent industry reports (Ericsson Mobility report and Quettra). Currently, the messenger enjoys sitting atop of over 35 million users’ mobile phones sending 10 billion messages per month.
Hike has been trying to stand out from the crowd of many international messengers by introducing localized features like regional stickers which allow users to send messages in their own language. Other features include Hike offline which allows users to send messages even when they are offline, Hidden Mode – hide chats with passwords, Heavy File Transfer – send files up to size of 100mb and News – daily news updates.
Hike which is being backed by Bharti Softbank, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprise and Japan’s SoftbankCorp, aims build Hike into a service beyond simple messaging, a requirement in today’s messaging market where players are diversifying by by adding more services such as voice calling, community groups, brand channels and emoticons.
Commenting on the integration, hike Messenger founder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal said “We’re excited to take a big leap forward in our mission to bring India online as we bring everything under the hike brand. From Day 1, we’ve believed that messaging will be a gateway to the internet for the masses in India and this move reflects just that”.
He added, “By the end of the year we’ll truly see hike, India’s first messaging application emerge as the platform that will bring India online in a big way. We’re just getting started”.
Set up in 2013, Tiny Mogul Games has twelve games so far on Android like Dadi vs Jellies which won Game of the Year award at Nasscom Game Developer Conference in2014 and Shiva: The Time Bender, the first Indian game to be featured by Google Play globally which have helped company amass 5 million downloads last year. Tiny Mogul already made games for Hike which allowed it to have its share of pie among fellow messengers like Line and WeChat, but now with the integration the games will also be more integrated with the messenger and allow the user to participate right off the messenger.
Hoppr, a location based check-in service was launched in 2012 and it works across all mobile devices. It was developed with an aim to build the hyper local commerce ecosystem in India, wherein consumers get to explore rewards and offers available with brands and merchants in their vicinity. With Hoppr onboard, it will bring a host of 200 brand coupons on Hike.