Hike, the Indian messaging app, has declared procuring CREO, a Bengaluru-located, media streaming technology startup. However, the firm has not disclosed the deal amount. A short-term statement was released by Hike about the procurement; nevertheless, it doesn’t seem that CREO will carry on working on hardware. The firm will be working on developer platform to allow third-party developers to create services on Hike Messenger.
Hike Messenger is quite famous in India and has given a fair competition to other messengers such as Facebook Messenger, Line, and WhatsApp. Adding more to text messaging, it provides emoticons, files, contacts, graphical stickers, user location, audios, images, voice messages, and videos to send them to each other. Hike Messenger was rolled out back in December 2012 and obtained its first funding round from Bharti SoftBank of $7 Million in April 2013. It is a joint venture between SoftBank and Bharti Enterprises. In order to remain competitive, Hike procured CREO to endeavor into the open-to-developers messenger platforms similar to Facebook Messenger.
Shubham Malhotra and Sai Srinivas Kiran G founded CREO; which is an Indian Technology startup that develops, designs, and vends consumer electronics and is in the trade of licensing operating systems. It was established in 2013 and comprised a 50-member group. Its hardware products consist of the Smartphone “Mark 1” and “Teewe,” the HD TV Streaming Media dongle that function on a proprietary Android-based OS known as Fuel OS that upgrades itself monthly by developing features from suggestions and ideas given by its user community. CREO has even assured to feature new software each month.
This is the third biggest procurement of Hike. Earlier, the company had acquired Pulse, a content sharing platform and ZipPhone, a United States-based free voice-calling firm. As of January 2016, the instant messaging firm has crossed the score of above 100 Million users.
Then again, Hike Messenger has lately rolled out its video calling feature in the previous year. The firm, earlier this year, also upgraded its app to Hike 5.0 that offers several new features that consist of a wallet support as well as fund transfers via Unified Payments Interface.
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