<p>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.</p>.<p>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.</p>.<p>Hike, backed also by Chinese WeChat-operator Tencent Holdings Ltd., has in recent years ventured into adjacent areas such as no-frills phones and expanded even into spheres such as mobile entertainment. On Jan. 6, Mittal -- son of Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of India’s No. 2 telecom carrier, Bharti Airtel Ltd. -- announced the <span id="6a55ca0c-596e-11eb-b1cd-308d99724420">closure</span> of Hike StickerChat.</p>.<p>Its demise coincides with a growing global backlash among technology experts, privacy advocates, billionaire entrepreneurs and government organizations against WhatsApp’s new policy of reserving the right to share user data with the broader Facebook network.</p>.<p>Over the past year or more, Mittal has steadily diversified Hike into social and virtual-mobile products. His company will continue to develop its Vibe social media app and work on a new gaming product called Rush, he wrote on Twitter.</p>.<p>“India won’t have its own messenger,” Mittal wrote. “Global network effects are too strong (unless India bans Western companies.)”</p>
<p>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.</p>.<p>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.</p>.<p>Hike, backed also by Chinese WeChat-operator Tencent Holdings Ltd., has in recent years ventured into adjacent areas such as no-frills phones and expanded even into spheres such as mobile entertainment. On Jan. 6, Mittal -- son of Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of India’s No. 2 telecom carrier, Bharti Airtel Ltd. -- announced the <span id="6a55ca0c-596e-11eb-b1cd-308d99724420">closure</span> of Hike StickerChat.</p>.<p>Its demise coincides with a growing global backlash among technology experts, privacy advocates, billionaire entrepreneurs and government organizations against WhatsApp’s new policy of reserving the right to share user data with the broader Facebook network.</p>.<p>Over the past year or more, Mittal has steadily diversified Hike into social and virtual-mobile products. His company will continue to develop its Vibe social media app and work on a new gaming product called Rush, he wrote on Twitter.</p>.<p>“India won’t have its own messenger,” Mittal wrote. “Global network effects are too strong (unless India bans Western companies.)”</p>