Hike, which shut down its flagship messaging platform in January this year, has now raised capital from three marquee investors— Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Coda’s Shishir Mehrotra and serial entrepreneur Elad Gil. The development was announced by Kavin Mittal, chief executive and founder of Hike, on Twitter.
Hike was founded in 2012 and was considered one of the fastest Indian unicorns giving stiff competition to Facebook owned WhatsApp. In August this year, Hike raised funds for the first time in 5 years from marquee investors, including Rajeev Misra (CEO, SoftBank Vision Fund), Sean Rad (Co-founder, Tinder), Kunal Bahl (Co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal), Arjun Sethi (Co-founder and Partner, Tribe Capital), Bhavin Turakhia (Co-founder, Zeta and Titan), Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), Binny Bansal (Co-founder, Flipkart), Aditya Agarwal (Partner in Residence, South Park Commons), and Rohit Kumar Bansal (Co-founder, Snapdeal), also participated in the round. The company was valued at $1.4 billion during its fund raise of $175 million in 2016 despite its inability to generate any revenue from operations.
Some more exciting news.
— Kavin Bharti Mittal (kbm.eth) (@kavinbm) November 24, 2021
I'm so psyched to welcome @eladgil @markpinc @shishirmehrotra as the newest investors in @Team_Hike!
We're excited about the future, are heads down BUIDLing and are pumped to have the opportunity to contribute to this exciting next decade 👀🤠 pic.twitter.com/N4zAVzbg0R
“The rapid technological evolution over the last few years has paved the way for massive disruption in social and gaming. There’s little to separate these two categories. Gaming is now inherently social, evolving into a new way for people to hang out and interact in the virtual world,” Mittal said in August 2021.
2/ First off → HikeLand.
— Kavin Bharti Mittal (kbm.eth) (@kavinbm) January 6, 2021
Last month I spoke about 30K new friendships are being formed every month on HikeLand.
In 2021, we're going to double down. However in a new avatar.https://t.co/iaJkLEG5M2
6/ Today, we're also excited to announce a brand new product → Rush by hike. pic.twitter.com/TpXm20Yazg
— Kavin Bharti Mittal (kbm.eth) (@kavinbm) January 6, 2021
The company operates on a fully remote basis with cross-functional team of over 160 employees, working from across 50 cities.