Messaging and social technology platform, Hike, on Wednesday announced the launch of a new product called 'Total, built by hike'.
'Total' lets users access essential services such as messaging, news, recharge, 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.
'Total, built by hike' has four key elements to make the end to end experience for users seamless.
The new platform enables a 'Single Login' via the phone number for all of total services such as messaging, news, horoscope, recharge, wallet, cricket scores and rail information.
Further, services on 'Total' take between 100 kb to One MB, ensuring a lightweight footprint on the device.
All of the services built on 'Total' can be accessed even without data via proprietary technology.
Developed in-house, the proprietary technology, based on the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) protocol does the heavy lifting of encrypting, compressing and transmitting data. 'Total' has effectively supercharged USSD to help bring an uninterrupted experience to the users.
Moreover, users will be able to purchase Sachet Data Packs starting as low as Re. 1.
"For the next billion true mobile first users, coming online can be still be quite complicated and intimidating. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That's all we've been doing. We've taken the 15-20 step process of someone coming online and made it into only a few steps. Buy a phone, turn it on and you're good to go. Everything, all the essential services all work out of the box even without data," said founder and CEO, Hike, Kavin Bharti Mittal.
"Our goal is to bring India online and online means data so we've also made it extremely simple to buy data packs right contextually inside the OS itself. We've worked closely with telcos on special data packs for these phones starting as low as Re 1/- to give people a taste of what it feels like. This is really powerful," he added.
Over the last six months, Hike has worked closely with telecom partners to enable the USSD Technology and Data Upsell on 'Total'.
Airtel, Aircel and BSNL cover over 42 percent of the telecom market, and are partners.
Intex and Karbonn are the first smartphone partners.
'Total, built by hike' will be available on four models across Intex and Karbonn.
The devices are scheduled to hit the shelves starting March 1.
'Total' users will also get upto Rs. 200 to spend on any of the services when they buy one of these devices.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
