The beginning of Tencent strategy – Ola to partner Hike!!

The Homegrown messaging app of India is now partnering with Ola for seamless cab services. It’s a unicorn tie-up happened on the valentine week and interestingly the partnership will be live this valentine day.

Now you can book any service of ola from the hike and use hike wallet for the payments. As a unicorn hike is yet to make money, but this heavy app (25 MB) cross-platform instant messenger is looking for a reliable user base before they monetize the app by enabling users to pay for their services. With Facebook acquiring Whatsapp for about 19 billion dollars has set the messenger apps to new levels and the duo of china Tencent is already making money with WeChat in China is what is expected as the future of hike in India.

The investment of $175 million raised on a series D funding by the Chinese internet giant Tencent and manufacturing firm Foxconn which valued the company at about $1.4 billion dollars back in 2016 and rewarded as the first company ever to join the unicorn club within such a short span of  3.5 years from its launch.

But Tencent is strategic in the investment as they compare hike to WeChat. WeChat users in China can access services to hail a taxi, order food delivery, buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends, access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognize music, search for a book at the local library, meet strangers around you, follow celebrity news, read magazine articles, and even donate to charity … all in a single, integrated app.

Hike is big India bet for Tencent. WeChat is nonexistent in India. To get India you have to be local (like Line is in Japan or Kakao in Korea & WeChat in China), They understand that and as a result, took the decision to invest.Even blue packets of hike or similar to red packets of Wechat!! Now it’s almost  1.5 years after the investment hike is now taking a leap to become the WeChat of India. Ola to partner hike is just the beginning of the journey, more partnerships are yet to come from every sector.Finally, it’s a happy valentine partnership that needs to be remembered as it happened to support two homegrown unicorns of India to complement each other.

More about Hike:

Hike messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones that use the internet for communications through text messaging, graphical stickers, emoticons, images, videos, audios, files, voice messages, contacts and user location.

Hike is a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Softbank and the sixth largest mobile application and is owned by Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of  Sunil Mittal, the founder, and chairman of Bharti Airtel

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