Hike offers native language experience through its vernacular app

NEW DELHI: Hike messenger, India’s first homegrown and fastest growing messaging platform, is launching its app in eight vernacular languages viz. Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu on December 23, 2015.

This launch for Hike would mean that people and communities across the length and breadth of India can now be in touch with their family, friends and contacts in their own native languages, defying the English language barrier, erstwhile felt in messaging apps.

This launch, available immediately on Android phones, has the following features: multi-lingual interface-- which means, from the moment the app is opened, one can choose the language of the app. Thus, the full app experience is in the consumer’s native language; multi-lingual keyboard that allows consumers to type in up to 9 languages (including English). It also offers glide functionality at the bottom of the chat panel that lets one swap between the languages with ease; the keyboard has predictive text technology that works on artificial intelligence and gives a wide array of relevant words in the native language as one types; Hike’s stickers are also available in all these languages and helps expression in native language.

Commenting on the launch, Kavin Bharti Mittal, CEO & Founder, hike messenger said, “Today, we’re excited to launch hike in 8 local languages. For the first time ever millions of Indians will be able to seamlessly chat in their local languages only on hike. Every single hiker will now be able to choose a local language and also with it, see a special keyboard that they can use built specifically for that language. One cannot build for India without understanding the enormous diversity in the country. This is another big step towards catering to that diversity to bring India online.”