Second Life

Kavin Mittal’s messaging app, Hike, had a turbulent ride over the past few years, but is now focusing on two verticals to infuse new life into the company

- Manu Balachandran

Kavin Mittal is a fighter at heart. The sort who, despite being bruised, is always ready for battle.

The past few years have been tough for Mittal and his messaging service startup, Hike. In 2016, it had become the darling of the startup ecosystem when it became the fastest unicorn in India. The New Delhi-headquartered company, promoted by telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal’s son, reached a valuation of $1.4 billion in three years and seven months, after raising $175 million from Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd and Foxconn Technology Group of Taiwan.

“We were flying high as the company was doing extremely well,” says Mittal. “We got to about 30 million monthly active users with nearly 10 million daily active users by 2016, and in less than four years, Hike became the fastest billion-dollar company in India.”

By 2017, however, Hike began to lose the plot.

That year, its staff strength swelled from about 140 to 380, it acquired two companies, diversified into new areas including payments, and became a super app—a one-stop app for many apps. All that, along with a change in the working culture at Hike, spun things out of control. Before Mittal could address concerns, Hike was on its way down. But 2019 was different. Last year, the 31-year-old and his team regrouped to narrow down its business model in an attempt to build the company for the coming decade.

Now, Mittal is betting on two verticals: Winzo, a company that Hike invested in last March, which was founded by Zo Rooms founders Paavan Nanda and Saumya Singh Rathore in 2018; and then there is Hike, the social platform where Mittal wants to create a virtual world and better user experience using what the company calls HikeMoji, an avatar or virtual clone of oneself.