India
has a population of 1.3B with 750M unique mobile users. Approx 350M are
feature phone users with another 400M being smartphone users. With the
data growth over the last 18–24 months we’ve seen the data users grow
tremendously to 200M users. However, a massive gap still remains. Why
aren’t all 400M users using data?
We
asked ourselves. Why are the rest of the people not in this 200 million
bracket? There are still many challenges that exist in the country to
bring the remaining 1B online.
On top of that the entire experience of someone coming online is a very tedious 15–20 step process:
It
was clear that to bring the next billion people online we would have to
do something radically new. Could we take this 15–20 step funnel and
collapse it into a few steps?
We think we’ve done it. Today we’re announcing a brand new product called ‘Total, built by hike’.
‘Total,
built by hike’ is a refined version of Android targeted at simplifying
the smartphone and internet experience for the next billion people. ‘Total’
lets users access essential services such as Messaging, News, Recharge
and more even without an active data connection and paves the way for
them to get on Data by providing packs at as low as Re. 1.
It has 4 key elements to it that combined together make the end to end experience extremely seamless:
1. News, Cricket, Recharge, Wallet & More < 1MB
2. Single Login for All Services
3. Works Without Data
4. Total Data Packs Starting at Re 1. Over 50% Cheaper than Market.
Total Data Pack Pricing vs Market
Over
the last 6 months, Hike has worked extremely closely with telecom
partners to enable the USSD Technology & Data Upsell on Total.
Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel & BSNL are the telecom partners which cover
over 42% of the telecom market.
Intex and Karbonn
are the first Smartphone partners that will carry ‘Total, built by
Hike’. Total will be available on 4 models across Intex & Karbonn.
The devices with Total are:
Intex Aqua Lions N1
Intex Aqua Lions T1
Intex Aqua Lions T1-Lite and
Karbonn A40 Indian.
The devices are scheduled to hit the shelves starting 1st March 2018 starting at a price point of Rs 3,000.
Closing Thoughts
We’re excited by the potential of Total, built by hike
to impact millions of people in India as well as other developing
nations. ‘Total, built by hike’ propels digital inclusion and furthers
the national agenda of financial inclusion as well as socio-economic
progress. It works well for service providers as it gives them access to
millions of people who can use their services offline.
To be one of the first to experience Total, built by Hike,
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Over
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Before I kick-start this article, please allow me to wish
“ A Very Very Very… Happy New Year 2018” To all you lovely readers and my well wishers.
It
has been an amazing journey so far being a part of this mobile app
revolution since 2006, I feel blessed to see both pre & post
smartphone evolution era and having experienced the change myself being
the developer, leader and now a father of my own mobility startup. So
thought to analyze the trend setters which kind of will rule this new
year.
So
here is my Top three technology trends you all should look out for in
your endeavors in this new year 2018, which as always, will offer you
loads of new opportunities to rock this world. Being a part of this
mobile app ecosystem I feel immense pride while writing this piece of
article for all you visionaries and future mobile apprenuer.
1. Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality:
Wiki Defines AR as :
Augmented reality (AR)
is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment
whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated or extracted
real-world sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, haptics or GPS
data.
As per Wiki VR is :
Virtual reality (VR)
is a computer technology that uses virtual reality headsets or
multi-projected environments, sometimes in combination with physical
environments or props, to generate realistic images, sounds and other
sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or
imaginary environment.
Mobile
AR could become the primary driver of a $108 billion VR/AR market by
2021 (underperform $94 billion, outperform $122 billion) with AR taking
the lion’s share of $83 billion and VR $25 billion.
In
2017 a lot has happened in this AR where Google & Apple invested
heavily to harness the true potential of it. Apple has launched ARKit & Google has come up with ARCore, for developer to innovate and create some meaningful mobile solutions for the smartphone users.
As AR
helps in adding a digital layer over virtual information to give a more
realistic and unambiguous outlook. AR intertwined apps will gradually
empower retail, life science, manufacturing, and many other domains
through a wide range AR apps being developed to cater these sectors.
I Feel :
AR
will take a huge leap forward to further revolutionize the ever
progressing gaming industry and will stretch beyond it to empower the
digital marketing world where gamification will be employed to attract
& acquire new consumer for brands . All marketers need to adopt this
tool to target their customers beyond conventional physical marketing.
With most of the marketers seeing augmented reality as a way to provide a
compelling user experience, we will soon be seeing a plethora of
creative AR apps alluring consumers to buy their customized offerings
Virtual
Reality technologies will be more focused on the game and events sphere
as it is already doing so in 2017 and will go beyond to add more
evolved app usage experience to offer an elevated dose of entertainment
for the gaming user.
I find:
With
iPhone X, Apple is trying to change the face of AR by making it a
common use case for masses. Also A whole bunch of top tech players think
this technology which is also called a mixed reality or immersive
environments — is all set to create a truly digital-physical blended
environment for the people who are majorly consuming digital world
through their mobile power house
With Gartner predicting 26 bn
connected devices by 2020 which ranges from LEDs, Toys, Sports
equipment, medical equipment, to controllable power sockets.We will be
privileged to witness the world where everything will connected with
these small devices thereby bringing information right where you are
standing. Also these information will be tapped right were it is being
generated to empower the data centre using Edge Computing tech.
The
smart objects will be interacting with our smartphone/tablets which
will eventually function like our TV remort displaying and analyzing
data, interfacing with social networks to monitor “things” that can
tweet or post, paying for subscription services, ordering replacement
consumables and updating object firmware.
Big Tech Gaints Are Already Bullish On IoT Connected World:
Microsoft
is powering their popular IIS(Intelligent Systems Service) by
integrating IoT capabilities to their enterprise service offerings.
Some of the known communication technology powering IoT concept is RFID, WIFI, EnOcean, RiotOS etc….
Google
is working on two of its ambitious project called Nest & Brillo
which is circled around usage of IoT to fuel your home automation needs.
Brillo is an IoT OS which enables Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and
other Android stuffs.
Established companies such as Microsoft, with its Intelligent Systems Service,
and enterprise software vendors likes SAP, with its Internet of Things
Solutions, are also adding Internet of Things capabilities to their
offerings.
Amazon
launched ‘Amazon Echo’ a amazing tech which works on your voice command
to answer your queries, play songs and control smart devices within
certain range.
I Feel:
IoT & IoT Based Apps:
Is
here to stay and will be playing a very crucial rule in helping you
navigate this world with more ease & comfort, making your commuting
safe, your communication smart, your shopping productive, your learning
more engaging and much more.. to make your living effective and
efficient. In fact, IoT is slowly becoming part of every aspect of our
lives. Not only will IoT apps augment our comfort, but they will also
extend us more control to simplify routine work life and personal tasks.
Most
of IoT powered devices are already relying on mobile devices to
syndicate data, especially in case of consumer IoT. With the surge in
overall uses of Internet of Things , I feel more mobile apps will be
developed for management of these smart devices.
A
blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all
cryptocurrency transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks
(the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in
chronological order, it allows market participants to keep track of
digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping. Each node
(a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain,
which is downloaded automatically.
9
in 10 government firms are planning to invest in blockchain for
financial transaction management, asset management, contract management
and regulatory compliance purposes.
Another research by Infosys says:
One-third of banks are expected to adopt commercial blockchain in 2018.
So
it is quite clear that secured transactions based mobility solution
will rule the fin-tech & other industry where security lies at the
core. App developers will have a crucial role to play where they will be
expected to develop more innovative app solutions to cater the need for
secure & connected world. Your mobile phones are generating lots of
confidential informations which needs to be secured from the third
party breaches. So techies gear up and pull up your socks as, I feel
Blockchain-based security mechanism are expected to be developed on
mobile apps in the coming years and will needed in all kinds of
industries ranging from fin-tech, eCommerce, Insurance tech etc….
Blockchain
powered cryptos like bitcoin, ripple, Ethereum is already a rage in the
technology & investment world. It has fascinated the imagination of
many tech innovators leading them to adopt blockchain tech to develop
wallets & currencies and most of them are being developed on mobile
devices & computer systems, thereby offerings lots of opportunities
for techies to adopt it as futuristic career options.
Using
the blockchain tech entrepreneurs will be developing a solutions mostly
over mobile to validate transactions securely, manage contracts
smartly, store digital currencies(like bitcoins ,XRP etc), manage
voting, secure hassle free shopping, powering banking transactions and
many more innovative solutions which will be targeted towards making
consumers life more resourceful and productive eventually.
There are many more trends which will be disrupting the mobility world like
Artificial Intelligence :
Where Machine learning , Deep Learning all will play a crucial role in
fueling intelligence to the machines to help them make smart decisions
without human interventions. Mobile chatbots is one of the prime example
of one such use case of AI. Apps like Siri, Google Now are already
harnessing AI technology and will be inspiring many more voice based and
Images based AI innovations to be made by mobile appreneurs. Mobile
data will be tapped giving it more intelligent forms by app developers
to make our life smarter with time.
Mobile computing/Cloud computing :Based
mobility solutions will be in high demand specially for big enterprises
where business decisions are made based on intelligent data analytics .
All these will be stored over the cloud and mobile will play a major
role in harnessing the power of those data to serve consumer in real
time.
Some of My Other Relevant Tech Article Which Can be Useful:
Having
seen the world of mobility, changing from feature phone to a smartphone
era I feel amazed how it has transformed the life of humans. Now we can
communicate in split seconds, transact in no time, buy what we need
with one touch, get entertained when & where we want, shower our
love to our closed ones without being physically present and do many
more things which one can imagine just over this tiny powerful device.
So
as a developer and as a tech visionary you have, the greater
responsibility to make sure that you are creating tools which
complements user needs and impacts them deeply. It’s your duty to
entertain them, educate them, and to make them feel safe & secure on
the go.
Ending
by, extending my sincere gratitude to all you awesome readers for
showering all your love & constantly inspiring me to write more
& learn more eventually.
Redesigns its App for easy discoverability of transactional services
Cab booking, bus, train, movie tickets, bill payments and more will soon be possible on Hike
21 December:
Hike Messenger, India’s first homegrown messaging app today announced
that it has crossed 10 million transactions per month on its Wallet,
growing 100% month-over-month. Hike is the first messaging app to
integrate payments in India and Hike Wallet has seen exponential growth
over the last two months. Of the 10M transactions, 70% were on recharge
and the remaining 30% on P2P.
The
app also has been redesigned to provide easy access to transactional
services on the new homescreen. Users will no longer need to scroll
through the chat thread or look for the services they want to go to. One
can view the entire portfolio of services and just tap to access these
and pay seamlessly through the Hike Wallet.
Seeing
this phenomenal response, with just a simple set of services like
Recharge & P2P, Hike is planning to add more services like cab
bookings, bus, train, movie tickets and pay bills in Q1 2018.
According to Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike Messenger, “The
growth on the Wallet has been tremendous and honestly we’re just
getting started. On the back of this growth, we’ve launched an updated
design to make it easier to discover and transact with services on Hike.
It’s also become quite clear to us that our users want more services.
So we’re heads down working hard to bring things like booking taxis,
movietickets and more to the platform. Expect these to start rolling out
as early as next quarter.’
About Hike Messenger
Hike
is the first messaging and social technology company made with love in
India. It simplifies how people connect with others and changes the way
they interact with content and services on mobile. It is the only
successful Indian messaging platform with scale.
Hike
was launched on 12/12/12 and acquired a user base of over 100 million
in January 2016. In August 2016, Hike raised its fourth round of funding
of USD 175 million led by Tencent and Foxconn at a valuation of USD 1.4
billion, making it the fastest company in the India to attain a
valuation of USD 1 billion, having reached the milestone in just 3.7
years. Investors in Hike include Tencent, Foxconn, Tiger Global,
Softbank and Bharti. Apart from these, some of the top tech veterans
from the Silicon Valley have also invested in the company and are
advisors.
Today, Hike has over 350 employees spread across 2 offices in Delhi and Bangalo
Hardik Gandhi is Master of Computer science,blogger,developer,SEO provider,Motivator and writes a Gujarati and Programming books and Advicer of career and all type of guidance.
