Hike Messenger, the developer of popular over-the-top voice and messaging application, said that it has appointed former Motorola executive Rajesh Rudraradhya as the Vice President and Head of Engineering, who will be based out of Delhi, and will lead a global team.
He will report into founder and CEO, Kavin Bharti Mittal, the company said, adding that he will be responsible for helping the company scale its engineering team and streamlining product development
“Rajesh has tremendous depth of experience in mobile having led large engineering teams to build some of the world’s most innovative products. Rajesh understands Hike’s mission to bring India online. His passion to solve consumer problems will enable us to realize our mission and build Hike into a product loved by 100’s of millions of people,” Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike Messenger, said in a statement.
Having over 15 years of experience, Rudraradhya has worked for companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, Google and Motorola. Before Hike, he was serving Motorola as the Director and Head of Wearables and Internet-of-Things software. Prior to that, he led Android Apps and Cloud engineering and was responsible for software experiences on Android’s best smartphones, the Moto X and Moto G series.
Over the years, Rudraradhya spent time working on seven different mobile platforms, launching many new products and software experiences. Rudraradhya led the launch of Moto 360, Android Wear’s first round smartwatch that grew to be the most successful of the Android Wear devices. He also played a key role in launching devices such as Motorola StarTAC, RAZR, DROID, MING and Moto G.
“I can sense the making of a great product when I see one and I believe Hike is in a great position to transform the messaging space in India. The opportunity to connect and serve a billion people is rare and what’s even more exciting is that we want to enable and connect people who will be using the internet for the first time in their lives on a mobile device,” Rudraradhya said.
Rudraradhya has also been an adviser to startups in the Internet-of-Things space.