The company, which claims to transact 30 billion messages per month, has been strengthening its management since last year. Photo: Bloomberg
New Delhi: Hike Ltd, the instant messaging company founded by telecom billionaire Sunil Mittal’s son, said it has received funding from global technology veterans, including Quora founder and chief executive Adam D’Angelo and Aditya Agarwal, vice president of engineering at Dropbox.
Others who participated in the latest funding round include Ruchi Sanghvi, a former vice president of operations at Dropbox and Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic Inc. and co-founder of WordPress.
Hike did not disclose the amount raised.
D’Angelo, who was chief technology officer at Facebook, has also invested personally in social networking platforms such as Instagram and Nextdoor. Agarwal was one of the first engineers at Facebook, where he oversaw the development of products such as NewsFeed, Search, Photos, Profile and Applications.
While Sanghvi is an active angel investor and adviser to many technology start-ups, Mullenweg is an online social media entrepreneur, who runs angel investment firm Audrey Capital, which has backed over 100 companies. Apart from investing in the company in their personal capacity, the technocrats will also take on the advisory role in the company.
“It’s great to have the world’s top brains in tech share Hike’s vision; and not just entrust us with their investment, but more importantly, also advise us on our product and strategy,” said Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder and chief executive of Hike Messenger and son of Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal.
Hike, which was launched in December 2012, has raised $86 million from Tiger Global Management and Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises and Japan’s SoftBank Corp., till date. According to the company, it has 70 million users, globally, with over 95% residing in India.
The company, which claims to transact 30 billion messages per month, has been strengthening its management since last year. The company has bought on board people from brands like PepsiCo, Amazon, Unilever among others to power its next phase of growth.
[“source-Livemint”]