The 33-year-old young man embraces his dream to start a startup to confront Facebook: He is a billionaire’s son, has failed his start-up two times, and has been invested by Masayoshi Son.

Kavin Bharti Mittal, a descendant of the family behind India’s second-largest wireless networking company, is planning to revive his struggling tech startup. This step was made after 4 years the company was valued at 1.4 billion USD and was “backed” by Softbank Group of billionaire Masayoshi Son.

Since being ranked among the tech unicorns in 2016, Delhi-based startup Hike has experienced a lot of ups and downs. The latest storm came last month when they shut down their messaging app – a platform that once made headlines, attracting the attention of many other investors including Tencent Holidings and Foxconn Technology with expectations of over WhatsApp in the Indian market.

However, steps backward does not mean the end for Hike, it is the statement of 33-year-old son Sunil Mittal of President Bharti Airtel. To rekindle hope for growth, Mittal is now betting on a new social networking platform like Facebook that promises to eliminate “fake profiles” as well as a game app aimed at responding. increasing demand in India.

“This is what has been my favorite thing in the past 18 months,” Mittal said. Hike will meet with investors and raise capital within this year.

Mittal’s efforts to save the collapsing startup show the difficulty many Indian tech entrepreneurs face – who are trying to chase a market of more than 1 billion users with a projected smartphone base. Ants will exceed 750 million this year. Triong when some just wanted to be the “domestic version” of Facebook or Amazon, others had unexpected success even, close to being able to beat the US giants.

In recent years, Mittal has seen many declines in Hike, the aura of the early years slowly drifting into the past. While initially receiving special attention thanks to novel stickers and a privacy feature that allows young people to hide chats from their parents, Hike’s messaging app later failed to challenge WhatsApp. in India. Another idea by Mittal – a Chinese super app like WeChat, did not achieve the desired success.

Hike saw operating revenue drop to $ 5,000 in the fiscal year ending March 2019 – the last year data were released from $ 81.00 a year earlier. Losses at $ 235 million.

Mittal said he is now focusing on driving revenue through the two new Hike platforms.

Vibe is currently the only approved social network in India. They are committed to connecting users with “the happiest people in the world online. Safe.” Meanwhile, Rush is Hike’s latest game platform that was born in December.

India’s gaming industry, just in its infancy, is expected to double to $ 2.8 billion by 2022, from $ 1.1 billion in 2019, according to Deloutte. Mukesh Ambani – India’s richest man said in February last year that the gaming industry will be bigger than the music, movie and TV Show combined.

“With Vibe and Rush, we have completed a major pillar. We will change the old way. We will start thinking about profits in 2022.”