Hike Messenger, the messaging app founded by Kavin Mittal, son of Bharti Airtel founder Sunil Bharti Mittal, has acqui-hired Creo, a Bangalore based tech-startup. The startup is known for making TeeWe, an HDMI based video streaming device. Hike Messenger, which is operated by Bharti SoftBank Holdings Pte. Ltd.
Creo, earlier named as Mango Man Consumer Electronics was founded back in November 2013 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra, ex-employee of Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp.
The Creo team constitutes over 50 members, while Hike currently has over 300 employees spread across offices in Delhi and Bangalore.
According to the Hike spokesperson, “The Creo team will begin work on a developer platform to enable 3rd party developers to build services on the Hike platform”.
In order to gain early-mover advantage over rival WhatsApp and Chinese competitor WeChat, Hike in June this year launched an in-app payment wallet. It allows bank-to-bank money transfer via unified payments interface and also permits those who don’t actively use a bank account to send and receive money from their friends.
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In February this year, Hike acquired InstaLively Livestreaming Pvt. Ltd-owned social networking app Pulse. As part of the deal, the startup founders joined Hike.