Kavin Mittal’s Hike bags another funding to experiment with gaming, crypto

• Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Coda’s Shishir Mehrotra and serial entrepreneur Elad Gil have invested an undisclosed amount in Hike.
• The development comes after Hike raised capital from top angel investors, in August 2021, for the first time in five years.
• Earlier this year, Hike decided to close down its flagship messaging app and focus on the gaming segment.

Messaging platform and super app Hike, which shut down its core operations 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 transaction details of this deal remain undisclosed. The development was announced by Kavin Mittal, chief executive and founder of Hike, on Twitter.

The development comes after Hike raised capital from top angel investors, in August 2021, for the first time in five years.

Several big names like Tinder’s co-founders Justin Mateen and Sean Rad, SoftBank Vision Fund’s chief executive (CEO) Rajeev Misra, Tribe Capital’s Arjun Sethi, Zeta’s cofounder Bhavin Turakhia, Cred’s Kunal Shah, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal and South Park Commons’ Aditya Agarwal participated in this round.

Hike was founded in 2012 and was considered one of the fastest growing unicorns (company valued at or over $1 billion) back then. It was valued at $1.4 billion during its last fundraise of $175 million in 2016 despite its inability to generate any revenue from operations.

Earlier this year, Hike decided to close down its flagship messaging app and focus on the gaming segment.

“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.

The company, in its previous press note, also mentioned that it will be looking to experiment with social and cryptocurrency. It also added that a part of the capital raised to expand its product strategy and hire across functions. It has a team of over 160 employees that are working across 50 cities in India.

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