Messaging app Hike is in a kind of mess with practically no revenue stream and losses mounting beyond the capital raised. In the process the company made some acquisitions which might have gone sour. So the management or the founder has decided to ‘go back to basics’.
The company has been operating from 2 places, Delhi and Bengaluru and now it may close down its Bengaluru ops and shift everything to Delhi. Those employees not wanting to relocate will opt out of the company and some have been shown the door by the company itself. Most of these details have emerged directly and indirectly through a post by Kavin Bharti Mittal, the CEO and founder of Hike.
From his writing and other available information, it can be gathered that Hike is downsizing. It is going to focus on its core activity, the private messaging service that it operates and is closing down the establishment in Bengaluru. It also means that out of the overall 300 odd employees -- including the ones who got added due to the 2 acquisitions -- 75 may lose their jobs through this move.
Now with regard to the acquisitions, Hike had added Pulse and Creo to its stable through the last year (2017). Pulse is a social networking app and Creo was into making Teewe, a HDMI streaming device. Pulse helps students create their own communities that can stay connected even after they leave their institutions. The founding team from pulse was absorbed into Hike.
In the case of Creo, it had a 50-strong team of technical hands and they also moved to Hike and were entrusted with the task of enabling third-party developers build services around the main Hike messaging app. These are some of the areas where the layoff is expected to happen when it comes to reducing manpower.
Besides these, the company also forayed into the digital wallet space permitting online booking of train and bus tickets as well as booking cabs from within its app.
In terms of the investments in Hike, China’s Tencent Holdings and an arm of the Foxconn Group have made investments in its and the startup had been valued as high as $1.4 billion at that time, around 2 years back. After that, one year the company shows a revenue of around Rs 42 lakh and the next year Nil; the losses are upwards of Rs 200 crore. Hike has a huge task ahead on hand to rectify the situation.