Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of Sunil Bharti Mittal and part of the Bharti Airtel promoter group family, has announced the complete winding down of Hike's operations. This difficult decision was made in conjunction with his team and investors, primarily in response to India's new ban on real-money games.

Mittal explained the challenging circumstances in a LinkedIn post. Nine months prior, Hike had initiated operations in the United States, but the recent Indian ban necessitated a “full recap” of the company. He stated that this operational ‘reset’ was deemed the most effective use of their time and capital, leading to the ultimate decision to cease all Hike operations. The Online Gaming Act, passed in August 2025, specifically prohibits all online games that involve monetary transactions, directly impacting Hike’s business model.

In an earlier newsletter dated August 21, 2025, Mittal had expressed profound ‘disappointment’ regarding the ban, acknowledging the significant ‘billions of dollars of investment’ made by entrepreneurs, developers, and teams nationwide into the online gaming sector. Despite his disappointment, Mittal conveyed an understanding and respect for the government’s decision, acknowledging its moral stance for society at large. He noted that policy-making is complex and democracies often involve difficult trade-offs.

Initially, following the ban, there was an announcement that Hike would wind up its India operations to focus on the US market. However, a subsequent announcement on September 13, 2025, confirmed the decision to ‘wind down Hike completely.’

Hike’s real-money game business aimed to cultivate a gaming economy where players could engage and earn, thereby fostering growth within their created networks. The company, which had secured capital from notable investors such as Tinder's Justin Mateen, Cred's Kunal Shah, SoftBank Vision Fund, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, and Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl in August 2021, operated remotely with 110 employees spread across 30 Indian cities.

Hike originally began as a messaging application, which was shut down in 2021. Following this, the company pivoted to developing a real-money game business named ‘Rush.’ This platform featured 14 money-based mobile games, leveraging Web3 technologies and a play-to-earn business model. Mittal proudly stated in his recent LinkedIn post that with Rush, they successfully built “a new kind of Casual PvP gaming platform and scaled it to 10M users and $500M+ in gross revenue (CEA) in just 4 years.”

Reflecting on the final shutdown, Mittal acknowledged it as both a disappointment and a hard outcome. However, he emphasized the invaluable learnings gained from the experience and expressed stronger conviction for future endeavors. He views this as the end of a chapter, while eagerly anticipating the