Hike Messenger has kept its promise and introduced free voice calling in India. Hike Calls will allow users to call for free, over 2G, 3G and Wi-Fi and across the globe in over 200 countries.
The addition of voice calling feature is the result of Hike’s recent Zip Phone acquisition. US based Zip Phone allows voice calling globally with an internet connection. The voice calling feature is presently coming to Android. There is no word on an expected roll out for iOS, BlackBerry and Windows platforms.
“While building free hike calls, we kept two things in mind. Firstly, India is a very cost sensitive market and as a result we’ve ensured that our service is extremely efficient on data. It means our users can pack in more minutes per MB when calling on hike. Secondly, we’ve made hike’s free calling service available globally in over 200+ countries. Hikers from India can now speak with their loved ones in India and across the world for free.”
said Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike messenger, in a press release.
In order to make a call, users are required to open their friend’s profile and then click on the dialer icon. The company claims that Hike Calls have been optimized to consume very little data, giving users more calling minutes per MB of data used. Hike has more than 35 million users in India and it secured $65 million in funding from BSB and Tiger Global in August last year. It competes with WhatsApp that announced yesterday it has more than 700 million users. Meanwhile, WhatsApp is still working on the voice calling feature that is expected to be announced this year.