Hike brought the world's first mobile-first virtual world, HikeLand out of Early Preview with brand new shared experiences and upgrades across HikeLand Home and HikeMoji. The platform saw early adoption with time spent inside HikeLand at a daily average of 50 mins. Adding to the existing watch-together, conversation experiences inside HikeLand Home, it introduced ad-free Ludo for users. Adding to this, it also rolled out full-body HikeMoji & expanded HikeLand Home to more people. Here users can add upto 3 friends to their home, where they can also do group voice calls. A brand new UI for HikeLand Home unlocks a front-facing view of the virtual world making room for more fun and banter.
Built with customers at the center, HikeLand is a magical place to hangout online. The latest additions aim at creating more ways for users to hangout online while hanging out offline continues to remain challenging. In line with that, HikeLand is slated to bring multiple bite-sized shared experiences. One such experience is homegrown favorite Ludo. Rekindling the nostalgia of playing Ludo with friends, the first casual game introduced inside HikeLand emulates the joy of hanging out with friends over board games. Ensuring the experience remains uninterrupted & seamless, Hike has chosen to keep this game ad-free & seamless with a dedicated Ludo icon inside HikeLand Home.
Adding to this, Hikers' virtual avatar goes to the next level with the new full-body HikeMoji making it more expressive and life-like. Crafted with unique insights to represent the diverse Indian demographic, the full-body HikeMoji is an extension of the expressive and fun HikeMoji face. The attention to detail that went into designing the full-body HikeMoji is reflected in 40 individual pieces added to complete the full HikeMoji look. Full-body HikeMoji also comes with a huge wardrobe to choose from across Indian, western, simple, premium, sports, lounge, superheroes amongst other categories.
Additionally, letting users add up to 3 friends on group calls, HikeLand Home can now be a party of 4. Users can host their friends for virtual hangout and chill sessions over games, their favorite content, and conversations. With its latest upgrades, HikeLand strives to shatter the loneliness of social platforms by creating shared synchronous experiences that bring everyday happiness to consumers beyond documenting their lives in feeds and statuses.
Speaking on the roll-out of the latest additions on HikeLand, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO, Hike, said,
"The feedback on HikeLand Early Preview has been fantastic. With over 50 mins time spent / day, users love the new user experience and it's clear they just want more. Today, we're following through on that demand. Games have been a huge request and we're excited to launch our version of Ludo on HikeLand built around the HikeMoji where up to 4 players can play while hanging out over a voice call. Ludo on HikeLand will be completely Ad-Free."
"Our users have also been chasing us for the full HikeMoji and today we're launching just that with Full Body HikeMoji that comes with its own wardrobe. Hikers will finally be able to be their funniest, most expressive self in HikeLand, and style their HikeMoji in unique ways. In addition to that, we've improved the Home UX so that all of these activities are easier to discover making the experience more engaging."
Launched in June 2020, HikeLand was built from the ground up keeping India in mind for a mobile-first audience. HikeLand was born out of an idea to push the boundaries on UX and go beyond the decade-old user experiences such as messaging & feed etc.
