Economic Times has an analysis on why and how Hike has seemingly lost the plot in India's high-stakes messaging battle ground. The article builds on the late May 2018 post by Hike founder Kavin Bharti Mittal that foretold the layoff of 25% of the Unicorn company's staff. Extracts:
In the last 18 months, Hike’s monthly active users (MAUs) have halved (37 million to 18 million) and its daily active users (DAU) diminished by two-thirds (23 million to 8 million), according to app intelligence service App Annie.
...The common hypothesis within Hike was that a majority of its users were from tier IIIII (sic) towns and cities and those who could be classified as SEC B and C. But it failed to get the right market niche.
...“For loyal users of Hike, people who love the product, there is use case for one person, say using it in hidden mode. And there exist multiple replicas of that one person. Ideally, Hike should have built around that audience, which is exactly what it didn’t do,” says the first person quoted in the story.The article mentions the newer messaging app - the local language focused ShareChat - as having executed better than Hike. And that Hike might take the regional language route as well.
Or, maybe we can expect another VC-backed combination?
#HikeShareChatDeal anyone?
