New Delhi:(IANS) Instant messaging platform hike on Tuesday launched over 5,000 new stickers in 30 local languages. It is available for free.

It aim to increase its user base in the country, which is over 35 million, with the launch of the new free stickers.

Other more popular rivals like Whatsapp and Viber have an user base of 900 million and over 40 million respectively.

According to the company, the new announcement makes it the largest repository of local stickers amongst any messaging app or platform.

“Messaging is undergoing a transformation with users looking at better ways of expressing themselves,” Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder and CEO, hike messenger, said.

“Stickers are a big hit with users and it’s becoming clear that it’s hard to go back to simple text once you have witnessed the deep emotion through which one can converse using hike’s 5,000 locale stickers in 30 different languages,” Mittal said.

The sticker packs have colloquial expressions, playful slangs, movie dialogues, popular expressions used in social occasions, greetings, wishes and much more.

The stickers have been bucketed under more than 25 categories including region specific lingos.

The messaging platform also informed that it was launching another feature called automatic sticker suggestions.

The new feature recommends the perfect sticker for every moment based on what users type making it easy for consumers to discover and use stickers.