India’s new tech unicorn!

About the funding

Hike, known as the competing messenger app of WhatsApp has raised $175 million in Series D round of funding, which was led by Tencent and Foxconn. These funds made the company’s valuation to $1.4 billion. The existing investors are Softbank Bharti ($7 million) and Tiger Global ($65 million). Founded by Kavin Bharti Mittal in 2012, Hike is claimed to be India’s only homegrown messaging platform.

Tencent owns WeChat, which is China’s dominant messaging app with over 700 million users. It has also invested in other messaging apps like Snapchat and Kik as well as a whopping $90 million in Practo, a Bangalore-based medical portal in 2015. Whereas, Foxconn has made investments in Snapdeal alongside Alibaba and it is reportedly eyeing on Paytm.

Hike has plans to increase its investment in video, local content, augmented reality and machine learning. It will also assess where it fits in with VR, AR, and other emerging technologies.

About Hike

The four-year-old messaging app, Hike provides over 10,000 stickers available in 40 languages. Moreover, this chatting platform includes news, games, live cricket, coupons and other features like Hike2SMS and Hike Direct specially built for India. The app helps to send free messages and share files without the internet connection. These features distinguish Hike from other messaging apps. Earlier this year, Hike claimed to have over 100 million registered users (i.e. downloads not necessarily active), 90 percent of whom are aged under 30, with 40 billion messages exchanged on the service each month.

Will Hike replace Whatsapp in India? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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