Hike partners with Airtel to bring ‘Total’ app to smartphones

Homegrown messaging app Hike has announced that it has entered into a partnership with Airtel. As per the association, the company revealed that now the smartphones that fall under the Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ initiative will come embedded with the Total app by Hike. From March 2018, the smartphones that come under this initiative will ship with the Total app as pre-installed.
The company introduced the Total app last month and the app is designed to offer services like news, messaging, recharge and more offline. Yes, users don’t need a working internet connection to get any of the information.

Speaking about the development, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder, and CEO, Hike, said, “With ‘Total’ on ‘Mera Pehla Smartphones’, first-time users will find it easy understand and navigate a smartphone. Using data is also simplified and ‘Total’ users can get online with special data packs starting as low as Re 1/-. This is really powerful. We are very clear that to get a billion people online, we need to make the whole process of coming online a lot simpler, less intimidating as well as cost-effective and this partnership with Airtel is likely to do that.”

The Hike Total app comes with a user-friendly interface and users have to login using their phone number with access to services like horoscope, messaging, cricket scores, news, recharge, rail info even without data. The company claims that the device is built on Hike’s proprietary technology USSD protocol.

On the other hand, Nikhil Gilani, Head, Devices & E-commerce, Bharti Airtel said, “Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ has been a pathbreaking initiative towards removing barriers to smartphone adoption in India and has received very positive response from customers. We share Hike’s vision of helping every Indian own a smartphone and benefit from the digital super-highway. We look forward to collaborating with all our partners under this initiative to give every Indian access to a smartphone, bring them online and be a part of Digital India.”