Hike and Airtel have once again joined hands to offer the former’s recently unveiled ‘Total’ platform to be integrated into latter’s smartphones available under the company’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ programme. With this partnership, the smartphones that are effectively less expensive after the cashback offered by Airtel will be preloaded with Hike’s Total, which will allow the users to utilise essential services such as recharges, news, and messaging without a data connection.
The Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ programme was launched in October last year under which the telco has partnered various mobile companies to offer smartphones at budget-friendly prices. The integration of Hike’s Total platform will bring down the cost of Internet to almost zero as the users will be able to chat, recharge mobile numbers, read news, and more without needing an active Internet connection. It was launched last month in partnership with initial mobile companies including Intex and Karbonn. The platform that usually takes less than 1MB of storage is now set to expand to a wider number of smartphones.
Hike had announced last month that it had partnered telecom companies including Airtel, Aircel, and BSNL to enable the Total platform that will cost customers as low as Re 1 for the Sachet Data packs. It is essentially aimed at the first time users who have negligible knowledge of Internet so that they get accustomed to the digital world. Without an active data connection, the Total platform employs the use of USSD feature to fetch the data over the network, in addition to exchanging chat messages and other rich content such as images and videos.
Commenting on this partnership Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike, said “With ‘Total’ on ‘Mera Pehla Smartphones’, first-time users will find it easy understand and navigate a smartphone. Using data is also simplified and ‘Total’ users can get online with special data packs starting as low as Re 1/-.”
