Hike appoints ex-Motorola exec Rajesh Rudraradhya as engineering head

Hike Messenger, the instant messaging app backed by Bharti Softbank (BSB) "the joint venture between Bharti Group and Japan's Softbank, has appointed Rajesh Rudraradhya as its vice president and head of engineering.

Rudraradhya has spent more than a decade in the Silicon Valley, working for companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, Google and Motorola. Prior to his appointment at Hike, Rudraradhya served as the director and head of wearables and internet-of-things at Motorola.

Rudraradhya will be based out of Delhi and will report to CEO and founder Kavin Bharti Mittal.

Rajesh's announcement follows other leadership announcements at Hike Messenger in the last six months. Vidur Vyas was appointed as vice president of marketing; Hemant Goyal as vice president of finance, Gautam Vohra as general counsel, Sumit Mehra as studio head, and Vikrant Bhatnagar as head of human resources.

Founded in July 2012 by Mittal, who is the son of Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, Hike is a peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging app that uses both data and SMS to deliver messages. It has released a number of new features in the recent past that include Hindi news bytes, stickers in 30 languages, group calling, group chat for up to 500 members and 100 MB file sharing. Hike is globally available on iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows.

Last month, Hike raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Quora founder Adam D'Angelo and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. In August 2014, Hike secured $65 million in funding from a group of overseas investors led by Tiger Global Management.