A few days after it released a teaser, BSB, the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Softbank (Japan), has shared more details on what its third initiative in India, an application called Hike, is about: - Messaging App using both data and SMS: It appears to be a peer to peer (p2p) messaging application which uses both data and SMS to deliver messages. It appears that data will be used for messaging between users who are on Hike, and SMS will be used in case the receiver is not on Hike. Users who are not on Hike will probably be asked to sign up, which is what most messaging apps do. For example:Affle's Pinch does this. - Free SMS: Hike recently received an approval from the TRAI for more than 100 messages per day per SIM, even before its launch. The app is is offering users 100 free SMS' per month, and as a carrot for bringing more and more users to the app, is offering 10 SMS per user brought in. - SMS Spam blocking: as an added incentive, Hike also appears to be looking to address the issue of SMS Spam which plagues much of the Indian market, saying that it has filters which will block SMS spam, and learn to block spam with time. More here. Our Take While not much else is available on the application, a few initial thoughts on BSB's entry into this market: - Crowded, but there's room for growth: SMS and text messaging is…
