Add one more thing to the list of challenges Facebook must confront as it seeks to expand in India.
Hike, a messaging app that competes against Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger in India, has raised $175 million in a round led by China’s Tencent and Foxconn, according to a report by TechCrunch.
Facebook has had a rough time in India, whose booming internet population that has made it a highly coveted marketed for Silicon Valley firms. And Facebook’s push to offer a range of free internet services was met with a backlash that has the company scrambling to regain its footing in the region.
On the messaging front, the company is now looking at a highly capitalized rival, one that has money from Tencent, which is behind the wildly popular Chinese messaging platform WeChat.
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For the moment, WhatsApp appears to be the market leader in India, with 100 million active users, according to TechCrunch. That is comparable to Hike, which earlier this year claimed to have 100 million registered users.
