[suhastech]

Whatsapp was created because telecom operators have crazy pricing for SMS (5000% profit margin last time I heard). So, people saved on money and limitations (India has a 100 message limit/day) with their data pack.

Hike wants to create an app that goes back to the SMS model where they pay the charges, not the users. They use a mass SMS gateway which is much cheaper. Using mass gateway also means the users must opt out of "Do not disturb" registry, which opens gates for more spam.

Interesting part is, it's backed by a large telco in India[1].

[1] "a 50:50 Bharti Softbank joint venture"

[pathik]

We would ideally love to have all users connect through data, but more than 80% of the 900 million mobile users in India simply don't have a mobile data connection.

Hence, if we are to achieve our goal of enabling universal communication among all our users, we have to offer SMS as a fallback channel.

And it also gives us a massive differentiating edge over other apps, so why not.

The whole "users opting out of the DND registry" is something that's controlled by TRAI, the Telecom regulatory body of India. We have no control over it.

It's not the ideal flow we'd like to offer users, but we've to work with what we have.

We're funded by the group which also backs a large telco in India, but we're separate companies.