Kavin Mittal's Hike Messenger raises $175 million; now a 'unicorn'

Martin Lau, President of Tencent on investment said, “With our investment, Hike will be able to leverage our deep domain expertise in the messaging platform space to provide more value to its users in India.”

The company, led by Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal's son Kavin, is now valued at $1.4 billion becoming in venture capital parlance- a 'unicorn'. Photo: Official Website

Hike Messenger - India's homegrown messaging platform competing with global giants like Facebook's WhatsApp and China's WeChat, has raised $175 million (approximately Rs 1170 crore).

The company said that it raised funding in a series D round led by China-based Tencent Holdings and Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group taking its valuation to $ 1.4 Billion (Rs. 9,350 crores).

Martin Lau, President of Tencent on investment said, “With our investment, Hike will be able to leverage our deep domain expertise in the messaging platform space to provide more value to its users in India.”

The company, led by Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal's son Kavin, is now valued at $1.4 billion becoming in venture capital parlance-- a 'unicorn'.

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A 'unicorn' is a start-up that is valued at $1 billion or more.

Existing investors Tiger and Bharti also participated in this round.

With this investment, the total investment in the messenger is now over $ 250 million.

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.”

In January 2016, Hike announced it has registered a user base of 100 million users. From which 95% of Hike users are based in India and 90% of them are young and below the age of 30.

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