 "hike messenger, Kavin Bharti Mittal")
Hike, the messaging app backed by SoftBank Group Corp. that aimed to compete against WhatsApp in the world’s second-most populous country, shut down and vanished from app stores Monday.
The startup valued at $1.4 billion in a 2016 funding round announced its app was going off the air earlier this month without explanation. The app started by billionaire-family scion Kavin Bharti Mittal has failed over several years to displace Facebook Inc.’s rival app as India’s go-to venue for social media and mobile communications. The country remains WhatsApp’s largest market globally.
Hike, backed also by Chinese WeChat-operator Tencent Holdings Ltd., has
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