$1.4B Indian Chat App Challenges WhatsApp In India, Comes In Unicorn Club Of Industries [VIDEO]

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has recently stated that rather than just being used for personal communication, WhatsApp is a "great channel" to have interaction with businesses. The Mountain View company for example, took a decision to launch video calls on Whatsapp.

They took a huge step towards fulfilling demands of its customers in India, its largest market with 160 million monthly active users, accounting for 16% of its total user base in the world.

According to the Forbes, users in India are communicating via WhatsApp not just to stay in touch with family and friends, but also they use it as a business tool for founders to keep track of daily operations.

In India, a number of business enterprises use WhatsApp for communication because it offers the option of 10 languages, thus increasing its usage in Tier 2 cities and rural areas.

However recently, WhatsApp has started facing a strong competition from Hike Messenger, which was founded in 2012 by Kevin Mittal, son of Sunil Mittal. Hike Messenger has already joined the coveted Unicorn Club of Indian startups.

Hike has successfully raised $175 million in a fresh round of funding led by Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology Group in August this year thereby joining the popular unicorn club of startups in India with a value of almost $1.4 billion. 

This Hike messaging app has been the fastest of the pack to reach the milestone, in just about three and half years after its launch. It took e-commerce major Flipkart five years, rival Snapdeal seven years and analytics firm Mu Sigma nine years to become unicorns.

Hike is also the only company in the unicorn club currently, which is free and has no revenue to show. What it has, apart from the faint valuation, is a 100 million user base that sends more than 1 billion messages a day.

Arpan Sheth, who is the partner in Bain & Company, says there are credible benchmarks like WeChat, SnapChat and Twitter to compare with Hike. He said that, "With 120-150 minutes per user per week, Hike has created stickiness. In this business the challenge is creating high levels of engagement and Hike has shown that promise."