In a one of its kind move, Skype has launched exclusively designed moving emoticons for India. These moving emoticons or ‘Mojis’ as called by Skype, are clips from famous Bollywood movies.
For example, there is a Moji that replicates the signature move by Shah Rukh Khan, another Moji does the cult disco dancer move by Mithoon Chakraborty.
Skype believes that this step will revolutionize the platform. Microsoft’s instant messaging platform collaborated with Bollywood studios, Yash Raj Films and Eros Now, for creating these moving emoticons.
Skype has also created new emoticons highlighting some of the gestures, food, and daily expressions honoring the Indian culture Bollywood stems.
Talking about the internet tariffs in India, Gurdeep Pall – Corporate Vice President at Skype said in a statement, “We identified that these clips might be heavy on data usage for users, and hence we have cached them on the app itself reducing the need for the user to download them every time while sending them over the platform.”
“There are about 100 Mojis now, and we will keep adding them on the app. We are also thinking about including several features, which may allow users in the future to send custom Mojis via the instant chat,” he added.
India is an important market for most of the instant messaging platforms such as Hike (70 million users), WhatsApp (900 million users), and Viber (40 million).
The company also detailed its plan for India and had affirmed that India is essential for its growth. It holds around 300 million subscribers worldwide.
Skype Bollywood Mojis: New Ways To Express Yourself
Explaining it further, Patil said, “Our goal is to provide the best possible messaging experience on Skype, and tapping into India’s extremely active and vibrant film culture is a perfect way to do that. The app has seen at least 500 million downloads from the Google Play Store.”
Skype users on Windows desktop, Mac, iOS, Android and Skype for the web, can find these new Bollywood Mojis in the emoticon section itself.