PM Case Study 2023

Jack of All Trades, Master of None – Hike

Background
Founded in July 2012 by Kavin, son of Bharati Enterprises Ltd. Chairman Sunil Bharti
Mittal, it was part of Bharti SoftBank – the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and
Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. A peer-to-peer messaging app like Facebook owned
WhatsApp, Hike doesn’t charge consumer. It’s not into advertising either.
India is the biggest market by subscriber base for WhatsApp, which had 201 million monthly
active users in the country as of February. Hike claims to have 100 million monthly active
users in India, half that of WhatsApp. It supports multiple languages, including English,
Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati and Bengali, but it failed!

Reasons Why Hike Messenger failed

• Complex Navigation & High Storage Space
• Hike was introducing 3-4 features to its users every year, too many features clouded
the messaging app’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Targeting Millennials Only

Problem Statement
1. Given the problems stated above, what improvements could have been done to steer
in the right direction and establish Hike as WeChat of India. Propose a minimum
viable solution by revamping the app and adding new features. The key is to conserve
your resources.
2. Explain how these features would solve the pain points and how would you measure
the success of your solutions?

Instructions and Guidelines

• The ultimate goal of the competition is to generate innovative and user-centred
solutions which are practical, scalable, and have a measurable impact answering the
problem statement mentioned in the case document.
• The quality of the solution will be given more importance than its length. The
candidates are advised to prepare solutions accordingly.
• The solutions provided should be concise and clear.
• The solutions can include text, images, graphs, flow charts, mock-ups etc.
• Plagiarism is strictly prohibited.
• Submissions should not be more than 6 slides (excluding title and thank you slides)
and must be in PDF format. Submission naming convention-
“TeamName_Institution.pdf”.