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Tag: Hike

  • Rush by Hike rolls the dice with Krushna Abhishek in #ChaloJeetKiChaal debut

    Rush by Hike rolls the dice with Krushna Abhishek in #ChaloJeetKiChaal debut

    MUMBAI: Rush, Hike’s high-stakes skill gaming platform, has unleashed its maiden brand campaign, #ChaloJeetKiChaal, roping in Krushna Abhishek to bring a heady mix of humour, hustle, and homegrown wit to India’s Ludo-loving masses.

    Touted as its boldest comms blitz yet, the five-week campaign spans TV, radio, and digital and targets over 20 million players across India’s rapidly growing Hindi-speaking belt. With Ludo at the heart of the action, Krushna channels the ultimate jugaadu gamer, proving that in both life and gaming, dimaag se khelo, aur jeet pakki karo.

    “#ChaloJeetKiChaal is our way of turning the spotlight on India’s sharpest gamers – people who play smart, hustle hard, and know that strategy & skill always wins over chance. We wanted the campaign to be as fun and fast-paced as the platform itself and bring gaming into the mainstream conversation with a smile,” said Hike CFO Manish Kumar.

    The campaign is packed with big moves:

    .  A 360° media splash across television, radio and digital

    .  Influencer integrations with Manisha Rani, Sunny Singh, and Nitish Rana

    . Vernacular-driven storytelling for deeper Bharat penetration

    .  In-app contests and the flagship Leedo Champions League—offering cash, gadgets, even wheels

    Far from being another luck-of-the-draw gaming pitch, Rush is doubling down on its skill-first promise. Every Ludo match is built to reward strategy, not serendipity, and the platform continues to invest in transparent matchmaking and user education to keep it that way.

    “India’s real-money gaming industry is rapidly evolving into something far more aspirational, rooted in skill, culture, and mass accessibility,” said Kumar. “Krushna was a natural choice for this campaign. He embodies the spirit of Bharat — quick-witted, endlessly relatable, and driven by hustle. His energy captures the heart of our vision: a gaming experience that’s skill-first, deeply inclusive, and unmistakably fun. This is what the future of gaming in India looks like.”

    With the dice rolling and the stakes high, Rush is inviting Bharat’s next-gen gamers to bring their A-game. After all, jeet unhi ki hoti hai jo chaal chalte hain dimaag se.

  • DB Corp announces 20 per cent hike in ad rates for My FM

    DB Corp announces 20 per cent hike in ad rates for My FM

    Mumbai: DB Corp has announced a 20 per cent increase in ad rates on My FM across its key markets with effect from 15 February.

    My FM has witnessed an increase in demand in its key markets which has resulted in an opportunity for the radio broadcaster to increase ad rates and reflect its strong positioning in these markets. “The key markets of My FM have been witnessing a strong uptick in growth, as economic activity is returning to normal after the second wave last year. In addition, businesses across sectors are looking to increase their return on investment and get the most out of their advertising budgets,” said the statement.

    “We are seeing renewed vigour in advertising revenues, almost all categories are back on radio for their advertising needs especially in tier 2 and 3 markets where radio has always been very effective in hyper-local connect and have bounced back to pre-Covid levels,” said My FM CEO Rahul Namjoshi. “Over the last few months, we have witnessed significant demand in advertisements and consequently rising inventory pressure. Our priority has always been to deliver innovative content to our listeners and it is in our best interest to keep the listening experience and advertisers’ interest in perfect harmony. The price hike will help us to continue offering an enjoyable listening experience for our listeners and deliver stronger RoI for advertisers.”

    DB Corp is one of India’s largest media companies and home to flagship newspapers such as Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Divya Marathi and Saurashtra Samachar as well as its radio network My FM.

  • Hike hires Seema Chawla as VP and head of marketing

    Hike hires Seema Chawla as VP and head of marketing

    MUMBAI: As Hike inches closer to launching its much-awaited offering HikeLand, India’s homegrown internet startup has hired Seema Chawla as its VP and head of marketing. Chawla joins Hike at an exciting new chapter for the startup, as it is closer to unveiling HikeLand, enabling a new social future. Chawla comes with over 20 years of multi-vertical experience; having launched multiple new brands and products in the course of her career across Disney, Ajio.com, Mattel, and Hotstar. Her appointment is in line with Hike’s plan to strengthen teams across product, design, marketing, AI and ML, engineering, partner functions, and user research with multiple hiring initiatives.

    “What got me wildly excited about coming to Hike was Kavin’s vision on building a new social future. As technology blurs the line between imagination and what’s possible, Hike is perhaps the only company innovating at the intersection of art, AI and consumer delight. I’m excited to join a team that’s changing the way users experience social and forever change the way they hang out online.  We’re building things right out of science-fiction movies and that’s really thrilling. I’m truly energized to be part of this journey along with the entire team at Hike,” shared Chawla.

    In her new role, she would be looking after all things marketing at Hike including branding, user growth, and product marketing for HikeLand and all subsequent sub-brands. In her previous stints, Chawla has been VP marketing at Hotstar International, chief marketing officer at AJIO.com, head of marketing at Mattel Toys India, and held various strategic brand, marketing, and sales roles at The Walt Disney Company.

    In line with the company’s recent announcement of leadership hires and multiple hiring initiatives, Chawla joins the team as the company focuses on growth and innovation. Working towards the launch and scale of its upcoming offering HikeLand, Hike plans to hire for over 20 open positions across teams. Hike has also initiated virtual hiring events as part of its ZeroTo2 program focused on onboarding young talent from colleges.  

  • Hike looks to strengthen teams with multiple hiring initiatives

    Hike looks to strengthen teams with multiple hiring initiatives

    Hike, India’s homegrown internet startup today shared its plans to continue hiring remotely as the ecosystem continues to navigate through a lockdown period. Working aggressively towards the launch & scale of its upcoming offering HikeLand, Hike plans to hire for over 20 open positions across roles in product, design, marketing, AI & ML, engineering, partner functions, and user research. Hike has also initiated virtual hiring events as part of its ZeroTo2 program focused on onboarding young talent from colleges. Amidst lockdown, Hike registered a surge of over 45% on inbound queries in Q2, 2020. 

    The start-up ecosystem in India is going through a challenging period resulting in some difficult organisational decisions. To play its part to support startup talent, the talent acquisition team at Hike is mapping and prioritizing the candidates facing job and salary cuts for its current hiring needs. Hike is working on launching a Social Recruitment Campaign as well to reach out to those facing job crunches in the coming weeks. 

    Anshuman Mishra, VP, Operations, Hike added, “While we face an unprecedented time as an ecosystem, we’re committed to our users in offering new-age social experiences. We aim to hire across teams through innovative remote initiatives as well as making efforts to reach out to talent in need of opportunities. Our DNA has always been to go after undiscovered talent who go on to become successful professionals and special initiatives focused on young talent like our ZeroTo2 programme. We have an incredible team at Hike who has adapted amazingly who continue to innovate & we’re looking forward to welcoming more Hikers to join this team”

    Hike has also kick-started the second edition of its successful programme, ZeroTo2 designed to hire freshers and young talent including engineers with 0-2 years experience as Hike believes that young people are core to their team and understand & relate to the customer’s needs better. Hike’s customer base has typically consisted of users under the age of 24 which makes having young people on their team central to their values and culture. 

    Hike is using tech tools and infrastructure like Slack, Hackerank, Google Meet, and code pairing platforms for their recruitment drive. Hike also conducted its first-ever ZeroTo2 virtual hiring event receiving participation from over 78 candidates. Hike’s ongoing SDET remote hiring event is scheduled to be completed by the end of this week and has already received 400+ applications. Hike is tapping into graduating and alumni talent from leading institutions like IIT Kharagpur & Dhanbad, NSIT, DTU, IIIT Delhi, NIT Kurukshetra, and Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology for their recruitment drives.

  • Hike adds more cheer to Valentine’s Day; gives love back to users!

    Hike adds more cheer to Valentine’s Day; gives love back to users!

    MUMBAI:  As Valentine’s Week is upon us, Hike adds to the celebration of love with a slew of newly launched love stickers and Valentine’s Day surprises for top 2,000 users. As a platform dedicated to enabling shared online experiences between friends and closed one, Hike also shared that over 1 billion love stickers were exchanged by Hike users in 2019. 

    As part of the Valentine's Day celebration, Hike has sent gift vouchers to its top 2,000 users, with curated options to pick thoughtful gifts for their significant others. Hike will be delivering the chosen gifts early in the day by 14th February on behalf of the top Hiker as a surprise and a token of love to their significant other. 

    Operating at the intersection of Art and AI, Hike is known for its locally relevant, highly relatable, fun and quirky stickers. With over 1 billion love stickers exchanged in 2019 and over 100 million love stickers exchanged in January 2020 alone, love stickers are one of the most popular sticker categories from Hike’s collection. Hike offers close to 2000 love stickers to enable the expression of your feeling this Valentine’s including individual options for Rose Day, Propose Day, Chocolate Day, Teddy Day, Promise Day, Hug Day, Kiss Day. Marking the celebration of love, Hike also shared that with the love stickers collection the most popular are the ‘I Love You’ stickers, with over 104 million of these exchanged in 2019 and over 11 million  of ‘I Love You’ stickers shared in January 2020. 

    As one of the only players leveraging AI & ML for local languages at a mass scale, Hike had also recently introduced HikeMoji to its users, an avatar that’s their funnest most expressive virtual self. Tailored to offer a local flavor, HikeMoji allows users to choose from 1000+ components integrating hyperlocal clothing, hairstyles, accessories as well as access to 100+ exclusive HikeMoji Stickers. Keeping up with the love in the air, new HikeMoji DPs are also added for users to express their Valentine’s state of mind. 

    Hike’s vision is to build a new social future with joyful products that are built around the consumers & not the other way around. Creating radically unique products at the intersection of Art, AI, Product, Design & Engineering, Hike is all set to take the user experience to the next level in 2020. Hike recently teased its upcoming social product, HikeLand aiming to transform shared online experiences. 

  • Hike launches exclusive Love Aaj Kal HikeMoji Stickers and HikeMoji looks

    Hike launches exclusive Love Aaj Kal HikeMoji Stickers and HikeMoji looks

    MUMBAI:  As the excitement around B-town’s It-pair- Sara & Kartik’s latest movie Love Aaj Kal, a Window Seat Films & Maddock Films production, continues to rise, fans can now enjoy their favorite stars in a cool new avatar with HikeMoji. HikeMoji, which is a way for users to enjoy their funnest most expressive self, will bring to life exclusive avatars of Sara and Kartik. In addition to that, Hike users will also get access to quirky and relatable Love Aaj Kal HikeMoji Stickers and animated stickers, letting them express their inner Zoe and Veer. 

    The collaboration captures the essence of the new-age romance that Love Aaj Kal represents, letting you express the same emotions & recreate these experiences with HikeMoji. Through this association, Hike users will receive HikeMoji options inspired by Kartik & Sara’s characters – Veer & Zoe from Love Aaj Kal. Users can further add these HikeMoji looks to their display pictures. Additionally, Hikers will also receive exclusive animated stickers playing on the dialogues and characters from the movie, designed to reflect the joy and energy of Love Aaj Kal, releasing worldwide, 14th February 2020. 

    As one of the only players leveraging AI & ML for local languages at a mass scale, Hike had recently introduced HikeMoji to its users. Tailored to offer a local flavor, HikeMoji allows users to choose from 1000+ components integrating hyperlocal clothing, hairstyles, accessories as well as access to 100+ exclusive HikeMoji Stickers.

    Hike’s vision is to build a new social future with joyful products that are built around the consumers & not the other way around. Creating radically unique products at the intersection of Art, AI, Product, Design & Engineering, Hike is all set to take the user experience to the next level in 2020. Hike recently teased its upcoming social product, HikeLand aiming to transform shared online experiences. 

    Hike users can enjoy the all-new Love Aaj Kal HikeMoji Stickers and animated stickers from 7th February 2020 onwards. Download today on Google Play & App Store.

  • BARC India exhorts TRAI to ‘empower’ it as digital measurer

    BARC India exhorts TRAI to ‘empower’ it as digital measurer

    MUMBAI: In a smart move that could lead to further enhancing of its credibility and importance, Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC India) has exhorted Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to “empower” it to be the uniform measurer of audience and other data related to TV, and OTT and digital platforms.   

    “BARC, which provides significant granular measurement data on television, if empowered by this Hon’ble authority, shall provide unbiased and accurate measurement data on contents broadcasted, streamed, re-transmitted, downloaded and shared in OTT platforms. The outcome of the above will lead to one single robust measurement report for television, OTT and digital platforms,” the Indian measurement organisation has said in its submission on TRAI’s consultation paper on regulatory framework for OTT communication services.

    Interestingly, while BARC India’s commitment to roll out digital media measurement services Ekam is a work in progress, the present TRAI consultation paper is more focussed on OTT voice or communications services like WhatsApp, Facebook’s Messenger and similar Indian products like Hike. However, it must be made clear here that many of the over 80 submissions from diverse stakeholders, including big TV companies like Star India and Zee, do dwell on video OTT and possibilities relating to regulations.

    Quoting from the Mobile Eco-system and Ad-sizing Report 2018 that highlights India has 250 million registered online video viewers, 100 million OTT viewers and that viewing of video content increased by 75 per cent in recent times, BARC India drives home the point if the contents streamed, viewed, re­transmitted and downloaded on OTT services “are measured and rated” by it, “more transparency in the digital eco-system” would follow.

    Highlighting the many strengths of the system and technology that the organisation presently employs and deploys, BARC India has submitted: “The OTT platforms prevail in the mobile and virtual worlds, which allow advertisers to easily and efficiently target well-defined groups or even individual consumers across various mediums…Hence, it is imminent to regulate, analyse and derive audience measurement system on OTT platforms.”

    Although several global agencies like comScore, Nielsen, App Annie and SimilarWeb provide third-party analytics on OTT platforms, the Indian industry lacks a credible and neutral measurement agency, it has been contended. As digital ad spends increase gradually, proper data analytics will offer additional opportunity to advertisers and clients to compare the effectiveness of media spends amongst various distribution platforms.

    BARC India, which has successfully set up a transparent, accurate, and inclusive TV audience measurement system that’s built upon a robust and future-ready technology backbone, while strengthening its case to measure and analyse the digital realm, has added the “big data and insights” generated by it presently powers “efficient media spends and content decisions” in a highly dynamic and growing television sector of India.

    With a panel that is currently being scaled up to 180,000 individuals, BARC India is also the largest measurement company of its kind in the world.

  • Hike eyes more funds in 2019

    Hike eyes more funds in 2019

    MUMBAI: Home-grown messaging app and India’s WhatsApp rival Hike has shut down its Total app which was launched in January 2018 as the company wants to just focus on keeping it simple for the masses, and will go back to the basics as a strategic move.

    Now, according to an ET Telecom report, Hike is eyeing more funds in 2019 and will start experimenting with monetisation models from 2020. The app will now primarily focus on messaging and stickers and will withdraw from other services such as payments.

    Since there is an interest on the consumer side in the country for short videos apps, the company is also expected to launch a separate app for content which may be on the same pages as video creating and sharing app Tiktok.

    As reports go, Hike did a lot of experimenting in the last year and half and added stuff at the cost of something else. As in the world of internet, things are very dynamic and products evolve quickly and in many cases, these products evolve away from the core. Therefore, Hike has decided to focus on its core which is to be ‘social’.

    So far, Hike has raised $261 million from investors, which includes Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd, manufacturing company Foxconn Technology Group and the Bharti Group.

    Since its last fundraiser which was in the fourth quarter of 2016, it raised $175 million by led by Tencent and Foxconn at the valuation of $1.4 billion. Most of the funds from the last fundraiser remain available in hands of the company but in late 2019 or 2020, it will look to raise more funds.

    Like the last time where the company went on to explore in multiple directions and lost focus on its essential and core in order to evolve the product is something it will avoid doing with the raised funds in future.

    The idea here is to “focus on to simplifying the applications”, Hike will focus on stickers and voice and with that it will continue to work on privacy as a feature through its encryption technology in India.

  • Hike unveils ‘No Formality’ campaign for Diwali

    Hike unveils ‘No Formality’ campaign for Diwali

    MUMBAI: Hike Messenger, India’s homegrown messaging platform, has announced the launch of its new marketing campaign “No Formality.”

    According to a Hike spokesperson, “No Formality is a way of life that emphasises that you should simply be yourself without any formalities or pretence – a way of celebrating traditions without formality.” He further added,“It is about accepting that we all need to treat each other as equals in a fun and easy manner. And ‘No Formality’ is an expression of that spirit. ‘No Formality’ cuts across culture, language, and geographies and is a reflection of our society.”

    The campaign kicked off with one and there would three three films. The campaign will run till December on digital, social and traditional media. It will be available in five languages – Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil across 16 states.

    In the countdown to Diwali, the campaign highlights scenarios related to the festival. For instance, the homecoming film is based on the fact that Diwali is usually celebrated with family.

    Even if someone does not want to go back but wants to spend it with his or her friends, tradition demands you have to go back home. The campaign of Hike, investors of which include Tencent, Foxconn, Tiger Global, Softbank and Bharti, will be amplified across social channels using #NoFormality.

    The homecoming film shows a young boy travelling back home for Diwali and there is an entire build-up of emotion as it shows him on the journey back home. But, there is a complete anti-climax when he reaches home: The Homecoming.

  • Hari Krishnan is new Lowe Lintas president – South

    Hari Krishnan is new Lowe Lintas president – South

    MUMBAI: Lowe Lintas has announced that Hari Krishnan is the new president of its South operations. This appointment comes on the back of GV Krishnan’s recent exit.

    To be based out of Bengaluru, his remit includes the agency’s offices in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. As the largest creative agency in South region, the portfolio includes over a 100 clients and brands such as Arvind, Britannia, Fastrack, Flipkart, Gold Drop, Hike, ITC Foods, MRF, Mobizz, Paperboat, Sonata, Tanishq, TI Cycles, TVS Motors and many other companies and brands.

    Krishnan, currently CEO of MullenLowe’s operations in Sri Lanka is in the process of transitioning into his new role.

    He had joined MullenLowe early 2015 from Grey India where he was heading their South operations.

    Hari has about 20 years of experience in the advertising and media industry; having spent most of it between Lowe Lintas, JWT, Star TV and Grey.

    Commenting on his move, MullenLowe Lintas Group, India Group CEO Joseph George said:“Hari has done an incredible job in Sri Lanka almost transforming our operations there overnight. Going by his track record across the agencies he has worked in, he is just the right person we need to build on the fantastic momentum that the South operations of Lowe Lintas have achieved over the past 3-4 years in terms of creative product and new business acquisition. Both of which, Hari is rabidly passionate about.”

    Hari Krishnan too added, “This is a homecoming of sorts for me since my association with Lowe Lintas almost 18 years ago started in the Bengaluru office. The India operations of Lowe Lintas has been on an unbelievable roll the past few years and my mandate is clear. The talent in our 3 offices in the South, especially the creative fire-power under Rajesh Ramaswamy’s leadership is just reassuringly and intimidatingly brilliant. Can’t wait to get started!”

    Speaking of succession for MullenLowe Sri Lanka, Joseph George said, “Our Sri Lanka operations are in a sweet spot thanks to all the efforts made in the past 18 months under Hari’s leadership and some fantastic clients. And we are perfectly poised to build on from here; which is why Hari’s replacement for the Sri Lanka CEO’s role is crucial; and so I am very pleased with whom we have found. The announcement will take place in a few days.”