Hike Messenger, India’s only homegrown and fastest growing messaging app, has announced that some of the world’s top notch tech veterans have invested in the company in their personal capacities and are playing advisers to it.
These top veterans include:
Adam D’Angelo, Founder and CEO, Quora – Adam previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Facebook, where he oversaw new product development and managed the engineering team. In addition, he guided the site’s architecture and infrastructure and started the company’s growth team.
Prior to serving as CTO, Adam led the Facebook Platform team and, as an engineer, built the initial infrastructure for news feed and the first generation of the company’s advertising targeting and delivery systems. He has invested personally in Instagram, Nextdoor, Asana and Wealthfront.
Aditya Agarwal, Vice President Engineering, Dropbox – Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company he co-founded that was focused on improving group collaboration and communication. Prior to Cove, Aditya was the Director of Product Engineering at Facebook where he oversaw the development of core products such as News Feed, Search, Photos, Profile and Applications. Aditya was one of the first engineers at Facebook.
Ruchi Sanghvi, Ex-Vice President, Operations, Dropbox – She was responsible for product, recruiting, marketing, communications and other functions. She came to Dropbox through its acquisition of Cove, a collaboration software company she founded in 2011.
Prior to that Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook, and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of key features such as News Feed. In the past, Ruchi has been awarded the Tech-Fellow award for ‘Engineering Leadership’, included in Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business’ & featured by BBC as one of five Indian technology pioneers. Ruchi is an active angel investor and advisor to many technology startups.
Matt Mullenweg, Founder & CEO of Automattic Inc. and Co-Founder of WordPress – As an online social media entrepreneur, Matt gives back to the startup community through his angel investment firm Audrey capital, which has backed over 100 companies since 2008, many of which have been acquired.
Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike Messenger said
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. Each of the them brings with him/her a core area of expertise, which we at Hike find immensely useful as we aggressively grow in India.
Hike has seen phenomenal growth in India over these last 3 years, having acquired 70 million users and transacting over 30 billion messages per month. Over the last year, Hike has brought on board solid leadership from brands like PepsiCo, Amazon, Unilever, Zynga etc. to power its next phase of growth and has been hiring top global talent.
Quotes about funding & Indian Market
Ruchi Sanghvi, ex-Vice President, Operations, Dropbox & Aditya Agarwal, Vice President, Engineering, Dropbox
India is close to our hearts and we understand the challenges faced by the billion plus people of India. It’s quite clear that messaging is playing a key role in bringing people online in a mobile first market like India and Hike Messenger has begun to play a pivotal role in that market. We are both aligned to Hike’s vision and are excited about what comes next.
Matt Mullenweg, Founder and CEO of Automattic Inc. and Co-Founder of WordPress
As an online social media entrepreneur myself, I have keenly observed India. I believe in Hike Messenger’s vision and I can see the team gearing up and are well positioned for aggressive growth in the country.
Hike’s Growth Story
- Dec 2012 – Global launch
- Feb 2013 – Messaging traffic grows 10X week on week
- April 2013 – Hit the first 5M user milestone in just 4 months of its launch | Raised $7M from BSB
- Feb 2014 – Hit the 15M user mark
- April 2014 – Received $14M fresh funding from BSB
- June 2014 – Crossed 20M user mark, launched first TVC
- July 2014 – Hit #1 rank on App stores
- August 2014 – Crossed 35M user mark, receives $65M fresh funding led by Tiger Global & BSB
- November 2014 – Launches regional stickers on hike
- January 2015 – Launched free Hike Calls
- February 2015 – Launched Cricket Scores on hike
- Aug 2015: Hike announces 20 billion messages per month and launched Hike News
- Sep 2015: Launched Group Calling with upto 100 people
Additional information
You can download the app at – http://get.hike.in For more information, please visit the Hike Blog
[Image Credit* – Wikimedia]