Today I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining Hike, one of India’s leading internet companies as the VP and Head of Engineering.
I’ve had an incredible journey over the last 15+ years, building software and launching great new mobile products — the software experience on Android’s best smartphones, the Moto X and Moto G series, launch of Moto 360, Android Wear’s first round smartwatch that grew to be #1 in market share, industry’s bestseller devices such as Motorola StarTAC, RAZR, DROID, MING and so on. I have worked at top companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, Google and Motorola, and advised startups in the Internet-of-Things space.
While I was having a great time doing this, I realized that the innovation I was creating was limited to the number of devices we sold! What if I could eventually take that innovation to a billion people without being tied to a hardware product or a specific mobile platform?
I was in India recently taking a break, when Kavin and I got together. I was convinced by Kavin’s incredibly clear and compelling vision for Hike and how through messaging, we could build a new kind of an Operating System for mobile that simplified the internet for a market like India. His vision and enthusiasm, coupled with the rapidly growing reach and love for Hike in India, and my own belief in the vision, helped me decide that Hike was the right opportunity for me.
India is mobile first, that means over a billion people will come on to the internet for the first time in their lives on a mobile device. In other words, we have an incredible opportunity to build things in the best way possible and not be bound by what’s already out there. That is a rare opportunity.
I’m very excited to join Hike and I’m looking forward to getting hands on again, to build a messaging platform at scale that has never been built in India. #MakeInIndia
100M down. 1B to go. We’re just getting started.
“Strong engineering is the backbone of Hike Messenger. It is a key enabler for us to deliver an insanely great experience on Hike. With Rajesh’s incredible experience on mobile, his passion to solve consumer problems and his alignment to Hike’s vision, I’m super excited about all the stuff we can build together.
As Rajesh said, 100M down. 1B to go. We’re just getting started 
#MakeInIndia”
– Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO