Image source: www.instagram.com/Hikeapp

When Hike was established in 2012, this homegrown messaging app was among the first Indian companies to venture into the field of instant messaging. Their competition included big names like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other services and they had the advantage of knowing the regional market better.

The founders realised the potential of the vernacular language market. As per a recent study, by 2016, the number of Indian language users grew at a CAGR of 41%, thus surpassing the English language users. The study also pointed out that the number of Indian language internet users is expected to account for nearly 75% of India’s internet users by 2021.

Hence, early on the instant messaging app has been working to make communication in the local dialect and other Indian languages fun and interactive. In 2015, Hike released its multilingual interface in eight Indian languages and have made its multilingual keyboards available in nine languages.

AI & ML-based solutions at Hike

The messaging app has been working towards incorporating the latest technologies into their inventories and AI and ML have taken greater precedence in driving innovation in their offering  product solution.

The primary focus of Hike’s AI team, that consists of more than 15 people is enabling Hike’s vision of helping solve India’s input problem. Some of the key areas that the team focus on are natural  language processing (NLP), computer vision and speech.

“ This team consists of 15+ members specifically working on the areas of NLP, computer vision and speech. We are currently looking at expanding this team and are running a range of specialized hiring drives,” Anshuman Misra, VP Operations, Hike.

In order to bolster its development in the field, Hike recently announced its plan to collaborate with the  Indraprastha Institute of Technology Delhi (IIIT-D) to kick-start research in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The initiative is aimed at enabling an ecosystem of research within the country that will help advance technological competence and know-how in the field of AI & ML. This will also include new age research-led innovation in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Speech, Link Prediction, Deep Learning and Computer Vision.

Further, the company announced that it will be using AI  and ML for its interactive stickers, in an attempt to reduce people’s dependence on the keypad, “We are on a mission to reduce people’s dependency on the keyboard. Unlike the US or China, languages and dialects in India change every few kilometres. This has a direct impact on input, where users struggle to communicate in their local dialects as QWERTY keyboards aren’t able to keep up. This is the gap we’re looking at bridging by using stickers as a foundation,” Anshuman Misra, VP Operations at Hike said.

These stickers are highly conversational in style and represent a diverse range of emotions, trends, characters, local dialects and more. Thus, making it a powerful way to communicate, taking away the pain of typing sometimes replacing entire sentences.

AI & ML for sticker creation

By leveraging AI and Ml, not only do the messaging aim to cover a large vocabulary using the tech and but also use the potential of the technology to scale up their reach dramatically, “Through stickers we are aiming at two key things, creating Sticker Content to cover a large chunk of local vocabulary and using ML and AI to scale this up drastically. Secondly, Sticker Discovery, recommending the right sticker at the right time, which sits at an interesting intersection of ML and AI taking into account a dynamic range of factors,” Misra explains.

In order to achieve this, it has created a repository of 30,000 stickers and which can be used for several Indian languages and dialects and it hopes to scale by another 100,000 stickers before the end of this year. Thus, by using, AI, ML and other emerging technologies like Natural Language Processor (NLP), Computer Vision and Social Network Analysis (SNA), Hike ensure that the right stickers are made available at the right time, after analysing through the content that they type.

In addition, AI and ML have been used to make the sticker creation process more effective by the means of automatic sticker selection by the machine. “Instead of having an artist create one sticker at a time, we assemble stickers automatically by the machine and get artists to review it. Also, AI and ML help suggest stickers that effectively substitute what a user wants to say next in the chat,” Misra.

The Road Ahead

This Delhi-based venture-backed by SoftBank, Tiger Global, Tencent, Foxconn and Bharti. Till date, it has raised $261 million. In August 2016, Hike raised its Series D round of funding led by Tencent and Foxconn at a valuation of $1.4 Billion and achieved the feat of being one of the fastest to attain unicorn status among Indian start-ups in under 4 years.

On the question of rising demand for voice-based solution which could give a direct competition to product Hike Sticker Chat, Misra says that messaging paltoform in looking at ways to incorporate the technology into their platform in coming years., “The Voice Assistant market is an important facet of User Experience in India. We are always looking at innovating and evolving our product further. It won’t be long before you see our platform of offering an exciting intersection of multiple medium technologies include voice tech,” Misra adds.

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