Exclusive: Kavin Bharti Mittal says for Hike, 4G will be the way to go ahead in the future

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Exclusive: Kavin Bharti Mittal says for Hike, 4G will be the way to go ahead in the future
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Kavin Bharti Mittal, the Founder and CEO of Hike Messenger, India’s only indigenous messaging App is a true reflection of his telecom-tycoon father, Sunil Bharti Mittal -calm, composed, observant and extremely adept at handling intrusive and sometimes tricky media questions. He sat down with Business Insider exclusively for over 50 minutes to chat about Hike and where he intends to take the brand. He is a self-confessed workaholic, who’s often found in office as late as 3am, and is known for maintaining a grueling work schedule.

BI: In a segment largely driven by international players such as WhatsApp, Facebook chats, how do you intend to differentiate yourself?

Kavin: There is clearly a different proposition for Hike. ….We've gone super deep in the market to figure out the problems people have. I remember shifting back home from the US. I was in Connaught Place. Next to Haldiram's you had these chat-wallahs. They had this one phone keeping them busy in between the orders. It was a Nokia 1100 phone. I had an iPhone 4S that used EDGE. Since 1996 we lived on the internet, and it became our life. The big question was how would these guys come on the internet. This took me back to my old days in Vasant Vihar when we had a computer and a turbo button that could make the internet into 2 Mbits/sec. Somebody installed a 56KB modem, somebody had a CD, installed Netscape, and we had Yahoo.com. That was the only thing you could access back then. It then evolved to Google, Facebook, and so on. You see churn on data every month and we really believe something as cheap and fast as Hike would be an entry point for a lot of folks in this country.

BI: Talking about the data plans that are available, do you speak to your dad about that? Airtel is one of the most popular in India. It's a trouble that you and I face.

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Kavin: I think everybody knows about this. It's nothing new. Airtel's been trying to solve it in their own way by launching sachet packs and so on.'

BI: Yeah, but you're young. Somebody Airtel would look at. Do you give feedback to your father when you speak about it?

Kavin: People keep talking about Airtel of course for obvious reasons. However, it's important to understand we talk to Airtel, Vodafone and Idea all the time. We believe messaging for telcos is a winner. If you ask people what's the reason they buy data pack, the top of the list is messaging. Messaging is driving revenues for telcos today, which is why we must work together and foster a great eco-system.

BI: What are your expansions plans in the next one year.

Kavin: Why are we so worried about going global? I don't understand. There are so many problems to be solved in this market locally. India is a country in 20 countries itself. If we solve these problems in the next 2 years it becomes easier for us to visit other emerging markets that are very similar to India, like Africa, and neighboring countries too. We can then build a sister group and do business with these countries.

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BI: In India what are the tech challenges and opportunities that you face because you're a 'made in India' brand.

Kavin: One of the biggest challenges we faced was, "arre yeh toh made in India hai, yeh kharab hoga." We had to fight that again, and again and again. Today, we're the 38thmost exciting brand in the country. If people see companies like us growing, providing them with great experiences, that perception will go away. I think we've done a good job managing that really well.

BI: Going ahead what will be your areas of focus as far as Hike is concerned?

Kavin: There is a lot to be done by going deep in the market, by going local. We really believe we're asking ourselves what can be done on 4G. We're asking some very interesting questions about what's possible on 4G. Hike Direct is no internet, no data charges. 4G is massive bandwidth. So things like video and stuff are likely to be our features.

BI: For our readers if you can please tell us the story about how you came to the word Hike and also the interesting logo that you have saying Hi.

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Kavin: Ah, of course. You know, there's nothing special, honestly. We wanted something that is simple, short, catchy and something somebody in the remotest parts of India could pronounce. HiKe! One day we were building the logos, We kept the 'ke' aside and we were like that's our logo. That's the central part today. I think that's the inspiration behind the logo, and it translates very well in different languages.

BI: Talk to us a little bit about your marketing strategy. Also what are the opportunities for marketers to associate with a platform like Hike?

Kavin: One day there's going to be a large opportunity for brands to interact with their customers on Hike. We launched coupons last year as a very small experiment which is the first step to figuring out how we can connect the brands that consumers love and yet be simple. You'll definitely be hearing more from us on that front later.

BI: What was the initial feedback that you received on the initial days of your launch?

Kavin: The first question I remember being asked is, "Why are you building another messaging app? Are you foolish?" Looking back I'm glad we were foolish. I think sometimes it's good to be naive. Our vision was very big. Much bigger than messaging from day 1. There was WeChat and WhatsApp at that time. I think we built a niche on top over the last 3 years. You know, we talk to users a lot of users who love Hike, and that makes our day because they are so entrenched in the brand. We see Hike touching people's lives in different ways.

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BI: Simplifying lives, is that your philosophy?

Kavin: Yeah...and we believe we can do it through messaging.

BI: You're a startup, and India is going through An interesting period in that space. Even the Prime Minister has been going around the world talking about how he wants to support startups. What according to you is an ideal environment for a startup? What are the problems that you see here?

Kavin: Today more than ever is the ideal time. There is a market. There is infrastructure getting better. There are lots of teams coming in with great ideas. There is always room to do something. And the best part is to have such a fantastic marketer as the Prime Minister. That's a reason why a lot of people's eyes are on India.

BI: What are the ideas that haven't worked for you?

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Kavin: Nothing yet…I think.

BI: That's quite a success rate.

Kavin: There's a lot of stuff internally that we can't talk about. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Even though Hike calling experience is good, it's not very natural. Nobody goes to Hike to make a call. How can you improve that so that even if you call from your native dialer you can make a Hike call. Am I happy with some of the experiences in the app? No I'm not. I think there's always room for improvement.