With China funding, messaging app Kik joins unicorns, looks to the future

In a blog post shared over Medium, Kik CEO Ted Livingston says the startup shares its vision with only five other companies in the world, and that includes Facebook, Line, Snapchat, Telegram and Tencent.

Kik has said it will use the funding to double the company’s size as it continues to build experiences for US youth.

WhatsApp, Kik, iMessage and other apps let people communicate without using up the data in their texting plans.

Kik Interactive, Inc., the maker of Kik, was founded in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2009.

This injection of capital will boost the company into the so-called “unicorn” club – a collective of start-ups who are valued at over $1bn. None of the social media platforms in the survey had significant increases in the number of users between September 2014 and April 2015, though among those who already use them, frequency of use had increased significantly.

Livingston says “Young Americans are a large group with unmet needs”.

One of Kik’s biggest competitors outside of the US has been WeChat, which features the same apps-within-an-app ecosystem, and has also largely dominated the Chinese messaging app space. The company concluded its search with Tencents investment, Livingston said, noting that the cash infusion isnt expected to lead to a Tencent acquisition.

Livingston commented: “Consumers and developers alike are suffering from app overload, and we are increasingly seeing the potential for services to be delivered in better, lighter-weight ways through chat, especially with bots”. The study also noted that message-deleting apps offer more private online socializing than Facebook or Twitter. It now has more than 240 million registered users.

Kik, though it now wields an impressive valuation, still has some intense work ahead of it. The company has only recently begun monetizing.