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Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, recently stated that rather than just being used for personal communication, WhatsApp is a “great channel” to have interaction with businesses. As the Mountain View, California headquartered company took a decision to launch video calls on Whatsapp, it took a giant 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.
Users in India are communicating via WhatsApp not just to stay in touch with family and friends, but also as a business tool for founders to keep track of daily operations. OYO Rooms, a hotel room aggregator has operations in over 100 cities; its founder Ritesh Agarwal has a WhatsApp group for every city to stay in touch with his sales and operation executives.
As the chat app is available in 10 local languages, its usage has even increased in Tier 2 cities and rural areas, where farmers have groups to share agri-price and weather updates. But in its largest market despite stepping up its efforts to sustain, increase and diversify its user base, Whatsapp is facing stiff competition from unicorn Hike Messenger, founded by Kavin Mittal, son of Sunil Mittal, chairman of India’s largest Cellular operator Bharti Enterprises.
Hike was founded in 2012, and 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 coveted unicorn club of startups in India with a valuation of almost $1.4 billion. This 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, however, the lone company in the unicorn pack that is free and has no revenue to show. What it has, apart from the dizzy valuation, is a 100 million user base that sends more than 1 billion messages a day.
Arpan Sheth, partner, Bain & Company, says there are credible benchmarks like WeChat, SnapChat and Twitter to compare (with Hike). "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."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkash...p-challenging-whatsapp-in-india/#11e7c7007b90
Users in India are communicating via WhatsApp not just to stay in touch with family and friends, but also as a business tool for founders to keep track of daily operations. OYO Rooms, a hotel room aggregator has operations in over 100 cities; its founder Ritesh Agarwal has a WhatsApp group for every city to stay in touch with his sales and operation executives.
As the chat app is available in 10 local languages, its usage has even increased in Tier 2 cities and rural areas, where farmers have groups to share agri-price and weather updates. But in its largest market despite stepping up its efforts to sustain, increase and diversify its user base, Whatsapp is facing stiff competition from unicorn Hike Messenger, founded by Kavin Mittal, son of Sunil Mittal, chairman of India’s largest Cellular operator Bharti Enterprises.
Hike was founded in 2012, and 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 coveted unicorn club of startups in India with a valuation of almost $1.4 billion. This 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, however, the lone company in the unicorn pack that is free and has no revenue to show. What it has, apart from the dizzy valuation, is a 100 million user base that sends more than 1 billion messages a day.
Arpan Sheth, partner, Bain & Company, says there are credible benchmarks like WeChat, SnapChat and Twitter to compare (with Hike). "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."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkash...p-challenging-whatsapp-in-india/#11e7c7007b90
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