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HIKE 'The Downfall of India's Fastest Unicorn'
'Where one dream fades, another vision begins'
Failures are prevalent in today's fast-paced tech industry. The story of Hike Messenger is a prime example of this trend.
Let's take a closer look at the rise and fall of Hike and the lessons it offers for India's tech industry.
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Bharti Enterprises launched Hike Messenger in December 2012, quickly capturing the attention of Indian users, especially those under 30. Within months, the app had millions of users, with 70 million by the end of October 2015
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In 2016, Hike reached 100 million users and was valued at $1.4 billion. The company received funding from big firms such as Tencent and Foxconn.
Hike launched several successful initiatives, such as Hike Sticker Chat, which allowed users to send personalized stickers, and Hike Wallet, a digital wallet that allowed users to make payments and transfer money.
Words are cheap 'but data tells the truth'
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After the official launch of Hike in December 2012, the app reported a million weekly users in just over three months.
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In 2014, it was found that Hike had 50% monthly active users out of the total registered users 15 million in February 2014.
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In 2016, Hike reported 30 million MAU and 10 million DAU in a Forbes India report.
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It has also been found that after the Hike Wallet launched in 2017, the app saw a surge in its active user base of 30% month after month.
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As per AppAnnie data, Hike had 1.07 million DAU in August 2018 and in December, of the same year, it went down to 90,000.
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Hike is the first company that prefers to give importance to WAU (Weekly Active Users) than the other two DDAU & MAU.
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In December 2019, the Founder of Hike told Inc42 that Hike moved to 2 million WAU, which was 500K in mid-May of 2019.
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Let's check the hike records
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In 2016, Hike became India's first fast messaging app unicorn, with actively 30 million active users.
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Hike became one of the fastest-growing mobile apps globally in 2013.
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Hike is rated India’s second most-used app for voice calling and instant messaging.
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Hike became 2013’s #1 free Android as well as iPhone app in India.
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After breaking all the records, Hike still didn’t save itself from the downfall.
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Let's analyze what led to Hike's downfall in India
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Time to dive into the main phases of Hike downfall
1. Lost its USP:
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Offering too many features like regional slang stickers, a two-way chat theme, hidden chat, and free text messaging at once leads Hike to lose its USP and leads to the path of failure.
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2. Only focusing on Gen Z:
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Targeting only Gen Z and students leads Hike to the failure path. Students are loyal customers, but a major part of our society works on the same cycle: A person who is going to school will go to college and then will go for a job.
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College teachers and corporations don’t use hike in their daily lives; senior people look for simple options that are easy to use, and that’s what WhatsApp is offering to the Indian market.
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3. Copying Western Business Model:
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Hike wants to be next to WeChat, VApp, and Line, but they forget that in China, Korea, and Japan they ban foreign social platforms and country-focused apps in their personalized apps, and that’s the reason Line, VApp, and WeChat succeed in their countries, but in India that’s not the case, and that’s why WhatsApp rapidly grows in the Indian market by focusing on all target audiences while providing a simple and easy-to-use messaging app.
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4. Not marketing big platforms like Facebook:
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Taking WhatsApp, their serious competitor Hike decided not to promote themselves on Facebook, which led them to not capture the right market and caused their downfall.
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What steps Hike could have taken to capture the Indian market
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1. Positioning the Sticker Chat App as its core value proposition:​
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Prioritizing USP is a big thing for startups, and consumers know companies by their USP​
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For example: Tesla is known for their technology in the automation industry, and because of their unique technology, it builds trust and user attraction, which makes it the No. 1 selling car in the industry.
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2. Hike should have exploited WhatsApp's data policy changes to boost its position:​
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Remember how Signal picked the pace up when WhatsApp’s new data-sharing policies emerged and users feared for their privacy?
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Hike can do the same as Signal to bring back user attention and upsell itself in the name of encryption in the Indian market.
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Great businesses survive to take the right opportunity at the right time like Samsung did when Android launched in the Indian market. Nokia failed to capture the right opportunity, which led Nokia to failure after huge popularity in the Indian market.
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3. Hike could have tapped into the Vocal for Local campaign:
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At the time of the “make in India” hike can also use this opportunity to bring back into the Indian market where the government is focusing on vocal for local and made-in-India campaigns, just like ShareChat saves themselves from downfall.
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The fall of Hike is as remarkable as its rise, and it needs a detailed study to improve the start-up scene in India. While there are a multitude of reasons for a big company's success or failure, an important development or phase that must have contributed to it is bound to be missed.
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Nevertheless, with India's fast lane to development, every innovation counts in bringing along the revolution that's happening in the digital space and beyond.
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Failure may hit hard like a rock, but if these very rocks are turned into "stepping stones," success may be just around the corner. As a budding entrepreneur, always remember that there's never a last opportunity, just a lost one.
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Raksha!
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