Hike ropes in Manav Arya as the head of Rush

Homegrown social firm Hike on Monday announced hiring Manav Arya as the head of Rush.

Before joining Rush, Arya has worked with brands like Junglee Games, Paytm First Games, Octro Inc, and The Walt Disney Company. He has about 13 years of experience in mobile gaming. According to Hike, the latest hiring will help expand teams across the board as it aims to double down on new portfolio like Vibe and Rush. Arya will report to Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO, Hike.

“Very rarely do people get an opportunity to build something incredible with an ace team, amazing vision & the courage to try new things. Leading Rush is that opportunity. When I first spoke to Kavin about his vision of building a new social future, it seemed radical yet within reach. Radical because it was disrupting many set norms, within reach because the processes, culture, team, conduit of creating was so well built. That’s what got me excited & that excitement has only continued to grow with each day.” said Manav Arya, Head of Rush in a release.

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Rush is Hike’s new product. Essentially, it’s an online gaming platform where mobile users can compete with each other in skill-based games and win real money. According to the company, Hike is curating both a AAA quality gaming platform and a community of player. It says all the games on the platform are skill-based. The company revealed it had received a “tremendous response” for its Call Break and Carrom games. It’s also planning to bring more games.

Earlier this year, Hike announced shutting down Hike Messenger. The instant messaging platform focused on Indian users with a variety of localised content such as stickers, avatars, and chat backgrounds. The platform competed with the likes of Signal and Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp.