Indian messenger Hike StickerChat to shut down in January

Hike StickerChat, one of India’s indigenously developed chat services, will shut down this month, according to a tweet posted recently by the company’s CEO.

According to this report by Innovative Beast, CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal has confirmed that the company will close the Hike StickerChat service this month, while retaining HikeMoji on its remaining services. The report states that the app has not been as successful as the company had hoped.

Mittal recently tweeted that the Hike StickerChat app had millions of users and that they were spending 35 minutes daily in the app. He stated that the ‘very loyal user base’ was a fantastic launchpad for the company’s HikeMoji and HikeLand products.

The company will instead focus on two of its apps, Vibe by hike, which was previously referred to as HikeLand and Rush by hike. “All your data will be available to download in the app. Your HikeMoji will continue to be available in both Vibe & Rush!” Mittal tweeted. The Rush service, which has been launched on iOS, allows users to create selfie avatars and play Carrom and other games like Ludo.

With HikeLand’s rebrand to Vibe, users will have to apply to join the community as it will be invite-only. There is no clarification on what qualifies a user to join, but the number of applications was already over a lakh, according to Mittal. Hike users posted their reactions to Twitter, expressing their sadness at the shutdown of the messenger service.

The shutdown comes at a time when many WhatsApp users are looking to switch away to another app in light of Facebook’s revised privacy policy that users must accept before February 8. WhatsApp has clarified that the privacy policy only extends to business accounts and that users are not affected by the changes, but that has not stopped users from moving to more privacy-friendly apps like Signal.