India’s WhatsApp rival, Hike messenger, announced that it has closed $175 million in funding led by new investors Chinese internet giant Tencent and manufacturing firm Foxconn.
The Series D round values the company at $1.4 billion, founder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal confirmed.
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Tencent, the company that pioneered messaging with WeChat, is the big name here, but existing investors Tiger Global, Bharti and SoftBank also took part in the round, which takes Hike to more than $250 million raised to date. Hike added some strategic U.S.-based investors to its roster earlier this year, but its last major funding was a $65 million Series C that closed two years ago.
“Hike deeply understands India; a highly diverse market with many nuances. It is on a mission synergistic to ours, which is to enhance the quality of human life through internet services. With our investment, Hike will be able to leverage our deep domain expertise in the messaging platform space to provide more value to its users in India,” Tencent President Martin Lau said in a prepared statement.