Social platform Hike has raised funding from a clutch of investors led by Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen and participation from SoftBank Vision Fund CEO Rajeev Misra, Tinder cofounder Sean Rad and Tribe Capital cofounder Arjun Sethi.

Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, Cred founder Kunal Shah, Zeta and Titan cofounder Bhavin Turakhia, Snapdeal cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Kumar Bansal and South Park Commons Partner in Residence Aditya Agarwal also participated in the funding round. The size of the round was however undisclosed.

Hike plans to use the funding round to expand on its product strategy and hire talent across different functions at the intersection of social, gaming, and crypto. The company currently has a team of over 160 employees across 50 cities.

"The rapid technological evolution over the last few years has paved the way for massive disruption in social and gaming. There’s little to separate these two categories. Gaming is now inherently social, evolving into a new way for people to hang out & interact in the virtual world" said Hike founder Kavin Bharti Mittal.

This fundraise comes after Hike had shut down its home-grown messaging app Hike Sticker Chat in January this year to focus on social products such as an approval-only virtual hangout platform Vibe (Previously Hikeland) and mobile gaming service Rush.

The chat app, which debuted as Hike Messenger in December 2012 positioned as India’s home-bred answer to the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, had notched up about 100 million registered users as of August 2016. It was rebranded as Hike Sticker Chat with a sticker-centric experience in April 2019. The company also counts SoftBank, Tencent, Foxconn and Tiger Global among its investors and had raised over $260 million until now.

Its last fundraising was in August 2016 when the firm raised $175 million led by Tencent and Foxconn at the valuation of $1.4 billion. Mittal is the son of Sunil Bharti Mittal, the chairman of Bharti Enterprises, the holding company of Bharti Airtel, India’s second largest telco.