Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ShareChat.
The evolution of social networking platforms only dates back a couple of decades, if not less, when smartphones and the internet revolutionized the way people communicated. With the rise of social networks, people with common interests started to group in nicely beyond the barriers of language and region. However, most of the social media platforms have usually been worked out with English as the base, keeping in mind the English language speakers and others who know English around the world. Therefore, when it comes to India and other countries, where the diversity of the languages plays a major role in exuding the quintessence of their cultures, the need for alternative vernacular social media apps was prominent. This is what SharChat decided to tap into.
Founded in January 2015 by Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd, ShareChat was set up as a social networking platform to cater the Indian audiences. The platform for Indian users is available in 14 different languages, namely, Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and Bhojpuri for now. ShareChat provides its users with numerous vernacular contents across categories like health tips, homemade remedies, weight loss, religious quotes, and dictionaries to only name a few.
Read about ShareChat founders, funding, revenue model, competitors, and business model here with StartupTalky:
| Company Name | Sharechat |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Sector | Social Media |
| Founders | Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, Ankush Sachdeva |
| CEO | Ankush Sachdeva |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Total Valuation | $3.7 billion (December 2021) |
| Revenue | $10.48 mn (Rs 80 crores in FY21) |
| Funding | $1.4 billion (March 2022) |
| Parent Organization | Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd |
| Website | sharechat.com |
ShareChat - About & How It Works?
ShareChat - Industry
ShareChat - Founders & Team
ShareChat - Startup Story | How It All Started?
ShareChat - Mission and Vision
ShareChat - Startup Challenges
ShareChat - Business & Revenue Model
ShareChat - Acquisitions
ShareChat - Funding & Investors
ShareChat - Growth and Revenue
ShareChat - Competitors
ShareChat - Future Plans
ShareChat - About & How It Works?
ShareChat, much like any other networking platform, allows its users to create, discover and share content amongst each other. Furthermore, the Sharechat users can follow other users on the same platform, regardless of whether they are content creators, friends, or any person of interest, and track regular updates. The ShareChat users are not only excited about consuming the content they find on the platform but are also involved in the creation of these contents.
In the year 2018, it launched quite a few exciting features under ShareChat Talkies like anonymous chat options, direct messaging to name a few. Other exciting and newly launched features include:
- “Shake-N-Chat” randomly connects two or more users engaging with content from creatively similar genres over a personal chat
- “Private Messaging” is designed to encourage the users to opt for one to one communication in the versatile Indian languages
- “Open tagging” is the feature that allows the users to create tags and post relevant content under these specific user-generated tags.
ShareChat - Industry
On delving into recent research it has found out that India has been seeing an exponential expansion in the number of social media users, which has grown to 518 million in 2020. The social media user in the subcontinent is further looking to grow and touch the 1.5 billion mark by 2040. Though Facebook was still recognized as the popular choice among the Indian audiences also as is the case with the rest of the world, the opportunities for vernacular social media platforms and content providers are overwhelming too.
ShareChat - Founders & Team
ShareChat was founded by Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva.
Ankush Sachdeva
Co-founder and CEO of ShareChat and Moj, Ankush Sachdeva was a BTech Computer Science student from IIT Kanpur. After Interning at Microsoft, Ankush co-founded ShareChat in 2015. He served the company as the co-founder and CPO of the company before being promoted to the rank of CEO in 2017.
Farid Ahsan
Farid Ahsan was a BTech student who completed his degree in Material Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He currently serves as the Co-founder and COO of ShareChat.
Bhanu Pratap Singh
Bhanu Pratap Singh was also an IIT Kanpur who completed his degree in Electrical Engineering from there. He is currently the Head of the technology vertical of the platform along with serving as the Co-founder and CTO of ShareChat.
ShareChat currently has an employee strength of over 1000 employees.
ShareChat - Startup Story | How It All Started?
ShareChat is based on a very generic insight. All of this all started when the co-founders observed that there exists a segment of users, who would love to express themselves but do not have a platform, and given an opportunity, they wouldn’t be reluctant to express. So ideally, this regional audience has their own preferences when it comes to content consumption, which most assuredly cannot be served by social products used by the metro audience. According to the co-founders, this regional set of the audience was widely unaddressed and the market was relatively untouched until ShareChat came into the picture. This is how ShareChat was born from three brilliant minds who capitalized on a general insight to make it a million-dollar startup.
With the vision of providing great communication and then a networking platform in mind, the ShareChat founders started their journey. In October 2015, ShareChat was founded by three IITians from IIT Kanpur Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva. Initially, ShareChat started as a content-sharing tool for the famous messaging application WhatsApp for the users who need to share more than 100K content pieces in a day. However, the platform gradually evolved successfully into a regional language-driven social networking platform.
ShareChat - Mission and Vision
ShareChat's mission and vision statement say, "We aspire to help individuals form substantial connections and stay entertained."
ShareChat - Startup Challenges
According to one of the co-founders, Ankush, “One of the biggest challenges we have is teaching the audience what a feed is, why you follow someone, why you create content. That is one thing which is missing in all the social networks and that’s why our audience, which is this new audience that has come up in India, finds it extremely difficult to use Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat”.
ShareChat - Business & Revenue Model
There are two prominent kinds of business models followed by the content marketing community on the internet. The first one helps in building a network where the content material is created and owned by the platform creators. On the other hand, lies the second kind of model, which helps create a major part of the content material by the customers. This is what ShareChat does.
ShareChat believes in existing as a popular social networking platform, where users can upload photos, videos, create content, chat with others, make friends, and more. However, unlike the other social media platforms, Sharechat helps in conveying all the messages in the regional languages of India.
ShareChat does not charge its users to earn revenue. Instead, it generates revenue through advertisements, payment transactions, and sponsored campaigns.
ShareChat - Acquisitions
ShareChat acquired Bengaluru-based content production company, HPF Films on September 16, 2020, which was the last company that ShareChat acquired until ShareChat's Moj acquired Times Internet-backed MX TakaTak on February 10, 2022. The deal was a strategic merger between Moj and TakaTak, and was valued at $700 mn. MX TakaTak stood among the four most downloaded short video apps and has been an archrival of ShareChat when the merger happened. With this acquisition, ShareChat now has 2 social short video platforms namely Moj and TakaTak under its arm.
| Date | Company | About Company | Value | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 10, 2022 | MX TakaTak | A short video making platform with which the users can gain followers and popularity | $700 mn | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| September 16, 2020 | HPF Films | Content producing platform that helps in the production of digital advertisements, short films, web series and more | Undisclosed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| April 27, 2020 | Memer | Meme producing platform for the Indian users | Undisclosed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| April 24, 2020 | Circle Internet | News platform for native language Indian internet users from tier 2 and tier 3 cities | Undisclosed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| February 21, 2020 | Elanic | Bengaluru-based buying and selling app | Undisclosed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| March 2, 2019 |
Clip App | An online video sharing app | Undisclosed |
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 21, 2022 | Series G Round | $60 million | Times Internet and subsidiary |
| February 10, 2022 | Debt Round | $100 million | Tencent Capital and more |
| December 16, 2021 | - | $266 million | Alkeon Capital, Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures |
| July 27, 2021 | Series F | $145 million | Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures and Mirae-Naver Asia Growth Fund. |
| April 8, 2021 | Series E | $502 million | Tiger Global Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners |
| December 23, 2020 | Debt Financing | $60 million | Twitter Ventures |
| September 24, 2020 | Series E | $40 million | - |
| August 15, 2019 | Series D | $100 million | |
| September 19, 2018 | Series C | $99.2 million | Shunwei Capital |
| January 18, 2018 | Series B | $18.2 million | Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi |
| November 23, 2016 | Series A | $4 million | Lightspeed India Partners |
| July 13, 2016 | Seed Round | $1.4 million | SAIF Partners |
| May 11, 2016 | Non Equity Assitance | $50K | Google Launchpad Accelerator |
| March 5, 2015 | Seed round | - | India Quotient |
ShareChat - Growth and Revenue
Here's taking a look at the growth highlights of ShareChat:
- ShareChat has been downloaded over 21 million times
- ShareChat has around 160 million users and a creators' community of 50+ million
- On average, around 5 million content pieces get shared every day on this platform
- ShareChat has half a million active users monthly
- ShareChat has an average Play Store rating of 4.5
- Has grown 7x in 2018-19
- ShareChat's Moj is leading with around 75 million monthly average users leaving behind MX Takatak and Josh
- The Monthly Active Users (MAU) of both ShareChat and Moj has grown to $160 mn in FY21 from $80 mn in FY20
ShareChat's revenue figures had not much impressive in the last financial year (FY20), where the company had spent Rs 715 crores and managed to register Rs 9.4 crores in revenue. The loss during FY20 is Rs 676 crores, out of which ShareChat lost Rs 329.4 crores in marketing and business development. The company was eagerly awaiting the results of the upcoming fiscal year.
Now that ShareChat has revealed its FY21 financials, it can be discovered that the company experienced a good year of growth. 2021 has truly been a milestone year for Sharechat. The company turned unicorn with the Series E round that fetched the company $502 million. Furthermore, what's more important is that the ShareChat revenue surged by 754.3% to become Rs 80.3 crore.
A major portion (95.8%) of its revenues comes from advertising sales, which grew by a whopping 764% to Rs 76.90 crore, and the sale of the Chatroom coins amounted to Rs 3.4 crore.
ShareChat Revenue Breakdown
| ShareChat Revenue Verticals | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Advertisement Sales | Rs 76.90 cr | Rs 8.90 cr |
| Chatroom Coins | Rs 3.40 cr | - |
| Ecommerce | - | Rs 0.50 cr |
ShareChat Expenditure Breakdown
| ShareChat Expense Verticals | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Business Development process | Rs 611.50 cr | Rs 316.80 cr |
| Employee Benefit expenses | Rs 177.80 cr | Rs 80.30 cr |
| Other Operating and Admin costs | Rs 267 cr | Rs 94.50 cr |
| Server Rental | Rs 367 cr | Rs 188.50 cr |
| Analytics | Rs 34.70 cr | Rs 22.30 cr |
| Music/Content Related Expenses | Rs 99 cr | Rs 12.60 cr |
ShareChat Financials
| ShareChat Financial Breakdown | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Revenue | Rs 80.3 cr | Rs 9.4 cr |
| Total Expenses | Rs 1557 cr | Rs 715 cr |
| Total Profit/Loss | Loss of Rs 1460.8 cr | Loss of Rs 676.8 cr |
| EBITDA Margin | -1500.5% | -1760.9% |
ShareChat - Competitors
Smartphones today are full of social networking and content sharing applications because that’s what people want to see and do today. In this highly competitive field, ShareChat, directly and indirectly, competes with:
- Roposo
- BetterButter
- Giphy
- Nerdery
- Koo
- Chingari
- Josh
- Digg
With Instagram launching IGTV and Snapchat’s endless innovations, there’s immense competition for ShareChat to face. It has also been facing cut-throat competition from China’s ByteDance as it is actively eating up ShareChat’s market share. Besides, over the past two years, the vernacular social media space in the country vastly heated up after ByteDance-owned Helo entered the market space.
ShareChat - Future Plans
In the coming future, ShareChat claims that there will be major changes in the way the application functions. The users can fairly expect a lot more variety in the area of the content formats. Also, the users can expect a lot more content creators transforming into celebrities, and to see people who become famous on ShareChat. Also, India has 22 official languages and more than 1600 known dialects. So, ShareChat wants to cater to more regional audiences. What the platform doesn't want is to limit itself to India. ShareChat currently has more than 130 million monthly active users (MAUs) and has been trying to take advantage of TikTok’s absence from India amid the government’s ban.
ShareChat has already merged with MX TakaTak and the combined platform is eyeing to grow to 100 mn creators, 300 mn monthly active users, and close to 250 bn video views.
FAQs
What is ShareChat?
ShareChat, much like any other networking platform, allows its users to create, discover and share content amongst one another. However, the platform is distinguished by the regional languages that ShareChat uses for the content shared.
What services does ShareChat provide?
ShareChat provides its users with health tips, homemade remedies, weight loss, religious quotes and a dictionary to only name a few.
Who is the founder of ShareChat?
ShareChat was founded by Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva.
Who is the CEO of ShareChat?
Ankush Sachdeva is the CEO of ShareChat and has been so since 2017.
Who are the competitors of ShareChat?
ShareChat, directly and indirectly, competes with Roposo, BetterButter, Giphy, Nerdery, Digg and many more.