According to a report by Financial Times, Tencent and Foxconn recently invested $175 million in Hike, an Indian messaging app. This is Tencent’s third investment in an overseas messaging service similar to WeChat, its own messaging app.

In 2012, Tencent injected 72 billion won, or 438 million yuan, into Kakao Talk, a Korean messaging app, elevating Tencent to the second largest shareholder. In 2015, Kik, a Canadian messaging app, won an investment of $50 million from Tencent. Meanwhile, early in July, Japanese messaging app Line was listed in the New York Stock Exchange, putting pressure on WeChat, which already faces great challenges in its overseas expansion. Tencent’s investment in Hike has been interpreted as a strategic shift.

“WeChat is not as much of a competitor today, and I think they’ve seen that,” said Bharti Mittal, CEO of Hike, in an interview. “We spoke to them very early on when they came to India to work on their own product, [but] it was too early to invest and they wanted to [work by] themselves. [The investment today] happened as we built a relationship over the past few years.”

Compared to Hike, WeChat has had a tough time in India, even after hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in its marketing. Tencent's president, Martin Lau, speculated on the reason for that in a prepared statement: “Hike deeply understands India, a highly diverse market with many nuances.”

Mittal is optimistic about the cooperation between Hike and Tencent, adding, “We (Hike and WeChat) will engage in different businesses but might cooperate in the technical side.”

Hike was launched in 2012 and raised its first round of funding from Bharti SoftBank in April 2013. After receiving this new round of funding, Hike is valued at $1.4 billion.