Hike raises $175 mn from Tencent, Foxconn; joins $1-bn club

The 'unicorn' club -- or startups with valuation of over USD 1 billion -- include Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola from India.

Commenting on the new round of funding, Kavin Mittal said that the company would be investing in services, people, office space as well as some long term bets in areas of machine learning and computer vision.

He, however, did not comment on the quantum of stake that Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology Group had taken with the fund infusion.

Hike is also looking for buy-outs, Mittal said.

"We will be open to acquisition of technology, and great teams and people...that enhance our vision and mission," he said, but ruled out an IPO at this juncture.

"It's too soon in our journey (for an IPO). We are only three-and-a-half years into the business. It typically takes 6-8 years for business to reach maturity," he said.

In January 2016, Hike had announced it has a base of 100 million users. As much as 95 per cent of Hike users are based in India and 90 per cent of them are below the age of 30 years. Hike users on an average exchange 40 billion messages per month.

Hike's biggest rival WhatsApp was bought by social networking giant Facebook in 2014 for a whopping USD 19 billion. Hike's other competitors include LINE, Viber and WeChat.