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Hike Messenger Raises $65 Million From Tiger Global Led Group

Hike Messenger Raises $65 Million From Tiger Global-Led Group

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 27 August 2014 17:17 IST

Hike Messenger has announced that it raised $65 million (approximately Rs. 400 Crore) from overseas investors led by New York-based investment firm, Tiger Global. The money will be spent on further development of the app and expanding the team, the company said.

Notably, the other investor in the funding was Bharti SoftBank (BSB), which is the parent company of Hike, and is a joint-venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corporation. Hike did not reveal the amount invested by Tiger Global and BSB individually. The valuation at which the funding was raised wasn't revealed either.

Bharti SoftBank had invested $14 million (approximately Rs. 84.6 crores) in Hike earlier this year, and $7 million (approximately Rs. 42.3 crores) in April last year.

Additionally, the company also claimed that it has crossed 35 million active users, adding 15 million in just two months. The company revealed that over 50 percent of its users are active very month. The instant messaging service claimed that it now handles over 10 billion messages per month, and over 3 billion stickers are sent every month over its network. In addition, the company claimed that about 90 percent users of the app are from India; out of which 80 percent are under the age of 25.

(Also see: Hike Messenger app review)

WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging service used worldwide, on Monday claimed that it crossed 600 million monthly active users, so Hike clearly has a long way to go before it can come anywhere close to that number across the globe. A more realistic goal for the app is to become the most popular messenger in India, since WhatsApp had claimed over 50 million active users in India last May.

Commenting on the latest round of funding, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike, said, "This is a big milestone for us. We've almost doubled our user base, adding 15 million users in the last 2 months itself. We can see that our users love hike and we're now doing over 10 billion messages per month. We have a great shot at becoming the first mobile-Internet company for India to cross 100 million users and we're extremely excited to have Tiger Global join us on our mission to bring India online".

Hike messaging app is available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry 10, Symbian S40, and Symbian S60.

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