The Hike Messenger’s developer, the instant messaging application meant for calling and messaging is prepping another round of fund raising in another six months to a year. The messenger is bullish of crossing a user base of 100 million mark by the latter half of the next year. Regarding the same, Kavin Mittal, the Founder and CEO of Hike Messenger stated that they have plans to raise the next round of funding. He has stated that it is tough to reveal the amount of funding they would require.
Kavin is Sunil Bharti Mittal’s son, the Chairman of Bharti Airtel. The messenger has raised a fund of $86 million from Bharti Softbank as well as Tiger Global. Mittal stated that he opposes the proposals by a telecom segment panel in order to regulate the application based services including Skype, WhatsApp and Hike. These applications make it easier providing local as well as long distance voice calls. This move will put them at the same level with similar services that are provided by the telecom operators.
He stated that they believe that the security is a major concern and that it has to be discussed. The company looks forward to the recommendations that come out.
The messaging platform has rolled out a new feature called Hike Direct that will let the users share data as well as files without the internet connectivity within a 100 metre radius. The company is also in plans to introduce features including video calling in a few months. Hike Messenger is competing with the likes of WeChat, Viber, Line and WhatsApp in India. The messenger app has surpassed 70 million user base in September this year. The company expects to generate great revenues in another one to one and a half years.
He further stated the payment infrastructure in India is poor and it is one of the barriers to generate revenue.
