Tinder Co-founders Invest in India's Hike

Over four years after becoming a unicorn, Kavin Bharti Mittal‘s networking and gaming platform Hike has raised a fresh round of funding in a round led by the co-founder of Tinder, Justin Mateen.

While the company did not disclose the amount of funding or the current valuation, the round also saw participation from other marquee angels including the other founder of Tinder, Sean Rad, Softbank’s Rajeev Misra, Tribe Capital’s Arjun Sethi, Zeta’s Bhavin Turakhia, Cred’s Kunal Shah, Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal besides Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal.

The fund will be deployed to expand on product strategy besides hiring across functions. The company operates a fully remote cross-functional team of over 160 employees. It plans to hire another 25 executives across social, gaming and crypto segments.

“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,” said Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike.

“We’ve been building new ways for people to express themselves online, building new ways for them to hang out online. More importantly, we are building new ways for people to participate in the networks they help build, in ways that weren’t possible before. The next decade is going to spawn a whole new social future and we’re so excited to be contributing to this future,” he added.

Earlier in 2021, the almost a decade-old company shut down its chat services to focus on Rush, a gaming app and Vibe by Hike, a networking platform.

In 2019, it also invested in other esports platforms WinZO Games.

Hike was given the unicorn tag in 2016 after Chinese internet giant Tencent led a $175 million round. Valued at $1.4 billion it was one of the fastest companies to have bagged the unicorn status.

Other investors who participated in that round included SoftBank Group, Tiger Global Management and Bharti Enterprises.

Hike’s founder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal is the son of Sunil Mittal, Chairman of telecom giant Airtel.

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