Hike Acquires Bengaluru-based startup Creo

Hike Messenger, first messaging and social technology company in India, on Friday announced the acquisition of  Bengaluru-based  media streaming technology startup Creo.

Creo, which manufactures media streaming device Teewe, is founded by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra in December 2013. Hike started associating with Creo as the company became part of a mentoring programme run by  Hike CEO and founder Kavin Bharti Mittal.

Sai and Shubham are ex Hike employees. The Creo team constitutes over 50 members. In the past, they have launched hardware products that include streaming media dongles and smartphones.

According to the Hike spokesperson, “The Creo team will begin work on a developer platform to enable third party developers to build services on the Hike platform”.

Hike Messenger introduced its video calling feature for its users in the beta format back in September to a select few, and in October rolled out to all Android users with an update. This is primarily to help the messaging app to transform India a ‘sight and sound’ country.

Hike Messenger, which started operation in 2012, has now acquired a user base of over 100 million in January 2016. In August 2016, Hike raised its fourth round of funding of $175 million led by Tencent and Foxconn at a valuation of $1.4 billion, making it the fastest company in the India to attain a valuation of $1 billion.

Investors in Hike include Tencent, Foxconn, Tiger Global, Softbank and Bharti. Apart from these, some of the top tech veterans from the Silicon Valley have also invested in the company and are advisors.