Hike Messenger, the rival to WhatsApp has been through one of the biggest funds raises in the Indian Internet Ecosystem. The application is now valued at almost $1.4 billion. It raised $175 million in the latest bout of funding led by Chinese company Tencent Holdings and Taiwanese electronic manufacturing company Foxconn Technology Group. Existing investors, Tiger Global, Bharti and Softbank Group also participated in this exercise.
Founded by Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal, Hike Messenger with the latest influx of funding has joined the “Unicorn Club” of startups with a valuation of USD 1.4 billion. Other members of the club include Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Ola from India. It is the fourth and the biggest bout of funding for Hike. It is the first and only Indian homegrown messaging platform.
Hike Messenger is India’s newest unicorn after securing funding from Tencent and Foxconn https://t.co/6l3GZChk0i pic.twitter.com/k4ZRrSBkqJ
— Bloomberg (@business) August 16, 2016
Both Tencent and Foxconn are big entities by itself, and it shows the high financial foundation on which the application is standing. It was stated by Hike Founder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal at an event.
Hike Messenger – Demo
The fresh influx of money will be utilized by the company to improve the technology of the application and providing optimum service to its consumers. Mittal added that the corporation is in talks with Government to introduce end-to-end encryption soon.
The messaging platform has over 100 million users in India and on an average; its users exchange 40 billion messages per month and spend 120 minutes per week on the application.
As the global venture capital market is becoming more and more unpredictable and risky, Giants from far East are in a mad scramble to dominate the Indian market which is offering a wide ambit of operation as well as openness. India has now ten unicorns which are still far less than China which has more than 50 companies in the club.
