Patanjali brings back Kimbho chat app; official launch on Aug 27

New Delhi: More than two months after it was taken down hastily, Baba Ramdev-led Patanjali Ayurved on Wednesday said that its messaging app 'Kimbho' is ready with new features and plans to re-launch it this month.

The Haridwar-based firm has now put Kimbho's trail version on Google Play Store for downloads and plans to launch the app officially on August 27.

It will also be available on Apple App store shortly.

"Kimbho app is now ready with new and advanced features," said a tweet by Patanjali Ayurved Managing Director Acharya Balkrishna.

The FMCG firm will officially launch the app on August 27, 2018, after fixing the "shortcomings", he further said.

On May 31 this year, Patanjali had removed Kimbho, which means how are you or what's up in Sanskrit, from Google Play Store and Apple's App Store, a day after the launch saying it was released only for one-day trial.

At that time, several technical experts has pointed out shortcomings in the app on security aspects.

Patanjali is pitching 'Kimbho' to be competitor of popular chat platform Facebook-owned Whatsapp.

When contacted Patanjali spokesperson S K Tijarawala told PTI: "We have put the trail version of Kimbho on the google play store, so that we come to know about the shortcoming. We are open for any amendments for any errors and we have invited feed back from the people also".

According to him, this will be a "safe, secure and swadeshi" messaging platform.

"Now we are expecting millions download during the next 12 days of trail period and we have built a load capacity for that," he said, adding "on August 27, Union Minister for Road Nitin Gadkari along with Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna would launch the swadeshi app".

The company had said that time, it would launch the app officially soon, once its technical development phase is completed.

The company had claimed that it placed the new app on Google Play Store and Apple's App Store only for a day, that too for technical testing.

Patanjali, which is known for its range of FMCG products, had claimed that Kimbho had witnessed around 1.5 lakh downloads in the first three hours when its trial version was earlier put on Google Play Store and App Store for a day only.