Hike Messenger launches new social features for Groups

With an aim to attract more people, India's first homegrown messaging platform Hike Messenger announced new social features for Groups like Vote, Bill Split, Checklists, Events with Reminders and even Teen Patti.

Vishwanath Ramarao, CTO, Hike Messenger, said, "Our new features will make sharing much easier within the group and raise the fun and productivity quotient. We believe that this could be a key driver for groups to come together and so much more in the online world ".

These features will work in the group with up to 1,000 members.

'Bill Split' that allows you to share your bills with your friends. So go ahead and book those movie tickets and reserve those tables for dinner or split rent and utilities amongst your flatmates because now you can create a bill split on the group, calculate everyone's share and receive money via Hike Wallet.

And as an added bonus, have fun playing Teen Patti within the Group right from the comfort of your home.

Meanwhile, the company has recently tied up with Airtel Payments Bank to power its Wallet.

Through this partnership, Airtel Payments Bank gets access to over 100 million users on Hike and will begin powering the Hike Wallet product and Hike users will have access to Airtel Payments Bank's vast product line including merchant and utility payments, KYC infrastructure, which is one of the largest in the country, giving a big boost to the platform in light of the recent KYC guidelines announced by RBI.

The hike was launched in 2012 and 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 India to attain a valuation of $ 1 billion, having reached the milestone in just 3.7 years.

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.