Hike Messenger raises $175 million funds from Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology Group
Hike Messenger has raised $175 million funds from Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology Group there by joining the unicorn club with USD 1.4 billion. The other members of the Unicorn club include Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola from India.
To be a part of this organization club, the startups must have a valuation over $1 billion. The new member Hike becomes 10th one from India. The present investors Tiger Global, Bharti Enterprises and Softbank Group also participated in the funding round.
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Tencent Holdings Ltd is a Chinese internet giant, and Foxconn Technology Group is from Taiwan. The company has raised $250 million till date
The Founder and CEO of Hike Messenger is Kavin Bharti Mittal son of Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal. Hike currently has tough competition from Facebook-owned Whats app messenger in India.
Hike Messenger was launched in the year 2012 and gained huge popularity within an year. However, Facebook over took in the past two years. As of now whatsapp occupies 96%of smartphones in India followed by Facebook and hike messenger.
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Hike Messenger CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal said “Tencent and Foxconn both have pedigrees that speak for themselves and such an investment especially in today’s market just goes to show the strong foundation on which Hike is being built. The new fund raise is going to allow us to push Hike to greater heights and invest in areas that will be key to our long-term vision and success.”
“The team (Hike) has reached an outstanding scale in a short span of 3.5 years. As an investor, we share their vision and are happy that they are moving ahead in their journey so quickly in a competitive environment” said Masayoshi Son, Founder, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group
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Hike did not disclose the number of monthly active users. When asked about the same issue Mittal said “ We don’t disclose that just yet. We believe that gives us a competitive advantage. If you don’t disclose, people think you are small, aand that’s a good thing,”
Currently hike messenger is supporting 8 other Indian languages including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu.