$1.4 billion valuation for Kavin Mittal’s Hike

Kavin Bharti Mittal led Hike Messenger has became India’s newest internet unicorn after securing a round of funding at a valuation of almost $1.4 billion from investors including Tencent and Foxconn.

Hike, a messaging platform, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a series D financing of over $175 million in a new funding round led by Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology.

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 $250 Million.

“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,” said Mr Mittal who is Founder and CEO of Hike Messenger.

In January 2016, Hike which seeks to compete with WhatsApp had announced that it has a user base of a 100 million users.

Around 95 per cent of Hike users are based in India and 90 per cent of them are young and below the age of 30.

Hike users, on an average, exchange 40 billion messages per month and spend 120 minute per user per week on the platform.

“We will be investing this amount in services, people, office space and some long term bets in areas of machine learning, computer vision,” Mr Mittal said.

When asked if the company plans to go for an IPO, he said “It’s too soon in our journey. We are only three-and-a- half years into the business. It typically takes 6-8 years for business to reach maturity.”

Mr Mittal said he has no plans to join Bharti Airtel, country’s largest telecom company set up by his father Sunil Bharti Mittal, and wants to remain focused on pushing his app, Hike Messenger.