Hike Messenger has raised a Series D financing of over USD 175 Million in a new funding round led by Tencent Holdings Limited and Foxconn Technology Group valuing the company close to USD 1.4 Billion.
Existing investors Tiger, Bharti and the SoftBank Group also participated in this round. This is the fourth venture capital round and the biggest to date for Hike, taking the total investment to over USD 250 Million so far.
Masayoshi Son, Founder, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group, the longest standing investor in Hike said, “Hike is one of SoftBank’s best performing portfolio companies in India and we are happy to have stayed invested in it from the beginning. The team 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.”
Hike : 100 Million Users. 40 Billion Messages Per Month.
In January 2016, Hike had announced that it has a user base of a 100 million users. 95% of Hike users are based in India and 90% of them are young and below the age of 30. Hike users, on an average, exchange 40 Billion messages per month and spend 120 min. per user per week on the platform. Hike has been built for these young consumers around 3 key pillars:
- Local Expressive Content that includes Hike’s very popular 10,000+ stickers available in 40 languages, themes and multi-lingual user interface. The availability of the Platform adds to this piece as it makes relevant local content available for customers to enjoy and share with their network of friends. The Platform includes News in English and Hindi, Games (Beta) on Hike, Live Cricket, Coupons, Just for Laughs and Hike Daily.
- Emphasis on Privacy that includes the innovative feature Hidden Mode that hides chats quickly and elegantly and Favorites so customers can choose who sees last seen, display pictures and status updates.
- Data Constraints. Features such as Hike2SMS and Hike Direct are built for India. Hike2SMS helps send free SMS when there is no internet connectivity and Hike Direct helps share files without the use of internet.
