Bharti SoftBank
10 Langley Rd, Newton, MA, 02459-1972, United States
Overview
BSB is a joint-venture between Bharti Enterprises and [SoftBank Corp.](/organization/softbank), focused on the mobile-internet space. Bharti Enterprises is one of India's leading business groups with interests in telecom, agri business, retail and manufacturing. Bharti has been a pioneering force in the telecom sector with many firsts and innovations to its credit. Bharti Airtel, a group company, is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. Bharti Airtel offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti's other business' include Beetel Teletech, the country's largest manufacturer and exporter of telephone terminals, FieldFresh Foods – a joint venture with Del Monte Pacific Ltd, to offer fresh and processed fruits and vegetables and Bharti Wal-Mart - a joint venture with Wal-Mart for wholesale cash-and-carry and back-end supply chain management operations in India, amongst others. For more information please refer to http://bharti.com. SoftBank is a leading Internet company that aims to provide a range of services including mobile communications, broadband infrastructure, fixed-line telecommunications, internet culture, and others. SoftBank's corporate vision is to "Make people happy through information revolution," and it continuously strives to create synergies among various content and services within the Group. For more information, please refer to http://softbank.co.jp.
- Total investments
- 3
- Lead investments
- 2
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 0
Sector focus
- Banking
- Finance
Investment portfolio
- Hike
Participated · Equity · Aug 2014
Hike is described in the article as a messaging app that competes with WhatsApp in India. The piece identifies the company primarily by its role as an India WhatsApp rival. The report states Hike raised $175M in a financing led by Tencent that valued the company at $1.4B. The article does not provide operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. No information on product roadmap, future plans, or additional financial details is included in the article. Hike is a messaging app launched in December 2012 that aims to provide a simple experience for users on limited data plans or poor connections while offering additional services. The product bundles messaging and photo sharing with platform features such as real-time news, live cricket scores, coupons and other services similar to Asian super‑apps. The company emphasizes tailoring services to people coming online for the first time in India, its largest market. Hike claims about 70 million users and says users send over a billion messages per day. It competes directly with global players like WhatsApp (noted to have ~900 million users) and is preparing to scale further. The company plans to work with new investor‑advisors to grow its user base and leverage their experience scaling products to hundreds of millions of users. hike is an Indian free messaging app that lets users message friends globally. Led by founder and CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal, the app was launched in December 2012. At the time of the report the app had 35m users. The company raised $65m in funding from investors including Tiger Global Management and Bharti SoftBank. hike intends to use the funds to expand the app's user base. hike is an instant-messaging platform launched in December 2012 and run by Kavin Bharti Mittal. The app targets youth users and claims rapid organic growth, reporting an increase from 5 million to 15 million users in nine months. More than 80% of its users are under age 25 and a majority come from India; hike is available globally on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, S40 and S60. The company says it will use new funding to double down on growth and expand its team. Management has stated an ambition to exit 2014 as the number one messaging platform for youth. The business has raised prior capital and is pursuing further user expansion rather than disclosing revenues in the article. Hike is a mobile messaging app that combines IP messaging with a patent‑pending SMS conversion tool so data messages reach users without data or on non‑data handsets. The app serves about five million registered users and handles nearly a billion messages per month. It is available across multiple platforms (iPhone, Windows, Android, S40, S60 and soon BlackBerry) and offers features like social status updates and emoji‑based moods. Hike plans to expand in India and other emerging markets (Middle East, Indonesia, Africa) and to add local content and entertainment (stickers, games) as its primary monetization route. The company funds SMS conversion costs itself in India and is exploring carrier deals to share those costs and drive data adoption. Hike is backed by BSB (a 50:50 Bharti SoftBank joint venture) and aims to reach 10 million registered users before courting external investors.
Team
No current team members are available.