Hike acquires voice calling company Zip Phone
08 Jan 2015
In its company's first acquisition, homegrown chat application platform Hike messenger has acquired free voice-calling company Zip Phone, aimed at expanding into VoIP, for an undisclosed sum.
''From day one we've strongly believed that through communication, we can bring India online, features from our users as well. We can't wait to launch this on hike," said Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder and CEO, hike messenger.
Says Kavin Mittal, "With the acquisition we take one more step towards that mission. Zip Phone's technology will allow us to bring free voice calling to the market much faster. Incidentally, this is one of the top requested
Zip Phone, a startup founded by Anuj Jain in the US, has developed a voice-calling app, which works globally.
''As a start-up enthusiast, I had been keeping a close eye on hike and its developments and I am excited to now be a part of one of the biggest and fastest growing startups in the Indian Internet space and finally, building for India,'' said Jain.
Launched in December 2012, hike has over 35 million users and till date has raised $86 million from Tiger Global and Bharti SoftBank, the joint venture between Bharti Group and Japanese telecom firm Softbank. The application also boasts of a fairly young user base with over 90 per cent of its users being under the age of 25 and residing in India.
The chat application has localised features, which are developed keeping in mind the infrastructure and cultural requirements such as Hike Offline - lets you message your friends even when they're offline, Hidden Mode– allows users to hide their private chats with a password, Regional Stickers - helps users express more in their own language, amongst others.
Mittal, who holds a MEng in electronics and electrical engineering with management from Imperial College London, did internships at McLaren Racing in 2006, Google in 2007 and Goldman Sachs in 2008, and started his first venture AppSpark in 2009. Mittal is the son of Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal.
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