ShareChat joins the elite list of Unicorn Club this year after raising $502 million from Tiger Global Management and Light Speed Ventures, Twitter, Snap Inc, and India Quotient. The Indian social media platform has become the 9th Unicorn with its valuation reaching $2.1 billion.
Consequently, ShareChat is the fifth Indian tech-startup to achieve over a billion dollar valuation with the infusion of new funding round, which will be used for its short video platform Moj.
The video platform took birth in July 2020 shortly after the government imposed ban on Chinese short video app TikTok in India. ShareChat has shown tremendous growth in recent past, claiming over 160 million monthly users while Moj claims to have 120 million monthly active users.
“Moj is well-positioned to seize the opportunity presented by the growth of short video in India. We are impressed with the team’s understanding of these rapidly evolving technologies and its ability to execute quickly, and we are excited to partner with them as they continue to build a great company,” said Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global.
Mohalla Tech, the parent company of ShareChat and Moj, is the beneficiary of the new funding round with a total funding valuation of $766 million raised till date. Earlier, Google had reportedly made plans to acquire the social media platform but did not materialise for some reason.
“With this infusion of capital we would continue to aggressively grow our user base, build a world-class organisation in India and the US and further strengthen our creator community, artificial intelligence-powered recommendation engine and platform health,” said Ankush Sachdeva, CEO and co-founder of ShareChat in a release.
ShareChat has made a strong presence in the country with its availability stretched to over 15 Indian languages. The company’s short video app Moj faces stiff competition from a slew of domestic rivals including Chingari, MX Player and DailyHunt’s Josh.
