Home grown instant messaging app Hike, on Wednesday, said it raised $65 million funding in a deal led by New York City-based Tiger Global Management LLC.
Hike Messenger is from Bharti SoftBank (BSB), a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Japan’s Softbank Corporation. BSB also participated in the latest round.
However, the break up of investments and valuation details are not disclosed.
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Hike said it would use the funds to invest in product and grow its team.
Previously, BSB had pumped in $7 million in 2013 and $14 million in April this year in Hike.
“With the new investment, we’re going to double down. We now have the ammo to tackle the more audacious items on our list. We’re extremely excited to have Tiger Global join us on our mission to bring India online,” Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO of Hike, said in a statement.
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Hike also said that it has crossed the 35-million user mark and over 50 per cent of the users are active on its platform on a monthly basis. 15 million users have been added in the last two months.
Hike competes with likes of other global instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Line and WeChat. Whatsapp recently said it has 600 million active users globally, with 10 per cent of them from India. Line Corp. has almost 500 million worldwide users.
At present, Hike is available globally on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, BB10, Nokia S40 and Nokia S60. It handles over 10 billion messages and three billion stickers a month.
“Kavin and his team have built India’s fastest growing mobile app and have an ambitious vision of bringing India’s one billion potential mobile Internet users online through their messaging platform. I'm excited to join the board as we continue growing rapidly in the months ahead,’’ Lee Fixel, Partner at Tiger Global Management, said.