Hike announced the launch of a new product called ‘Total, built by hike’. ‘Total’ is a refined version of Android targeted at the next billion people. ‘Total’ lets users access essential services such as Messaging, News, Recharge and more even without an active data connection and paves the way for them to get on Data by providing packs at as low as Re. 1.
‘Total, built by hike’ has 4 key elements to it that combined together make the end to end experience extremely seamless. Over the last 6 months, Hike has worked extremely closely with telecom partners to enable the USSD Technology & Data Upsell on Total. Airtel, Aircel and BSNL are the telecom partners which cover over 42% of the telecom market.
On the device side, Intex and Karbonn are the first Smartphone partners. ‘Total, built by hike’ will be available on 4 models across Intex & Karbonn. The Intex devices with Total are Aqua Lions N1, Aqua Lions T1, Aqua Lions T1-Lite and the Karbonn device is A40 Indian. The devices are scheduled to hit the shelves starting 1st March 2018. Total users will also get upto Rs. 200 to spend on any of the services when they buy one of these devices.
On the launch of ‘Total, built by hike’, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike said, “For the next billion true mobile first users, coming online can be still be quite complicated and intimidating. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That’s all we’ve been doing. We’ve taken the 15-20 step process of someone coming online and made it into only a few steps – “Buy a phone, turn it on and you’re good to go. Everything, all the essential services all work out of the box even without data.”