Hike, which initially launched as an instant messaging app in 2012 to rival the likes of WhatsApp, is shutting down. Led by Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of Airtel founder Sunil Bharti Mittal, said a decision has been made “to wind down Hike completely”.
In a Substack post, Mittal explained how nine months ago, the company had launched its operations in the US, but after India’s recent real-money gaming ban, the company needs to carry out a “full recap”.
He wrote: “The last 13 years have been immense. Hike Messenger reached 40M MAUs and became the 35th most loved consumer brand in India at its peak. With Rush, we built a new kind of Casual PvP gaming platform and scaled it to 10M users and $500M+ in gross revenue per year (CEA) in just four years.”
He said while exploring “outside of Hike”, he finds there is a future in AI: “For the first time, technology has both intelligence and memory. Imagine products that don’t just serve us functionally but truly know us — systems that adapt, grow, and partner with us. As a UX-first builder, this is the most exciting time to be building software.”