The advertising engine behind ShareChat’s social media ambitions

In mid-June, ShareChat announced that it had closed a multi-tranche funding round. The round saw ShareChat raise $520 million, with its valuation shooting up to $5 billion—a 7X jump from just two years ago.

ShareChat’s cap table also makes for impressive reading. Its latest fundraise added Times Internet and Google to a list that already boasted the likes of Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek and global investment firm Tiger Global.

ShareChat, which wants to cement its position as the social media app for India’s masses, now finds itself in an enviable position. Flush with funding, the company also has India’s largest short video app, Moj, in its kitty. Earlier this year, it doubled down on the short video space with the acquisition of MX TakaTak, arguably Moj’s closest competitor, for $700 million.

According to research from app analytics platform data.ai, ShareChat has nearly 80 million monthly active users (MAU) as of August 2022. Moj, meanwhile, has 58 million, and MX TakaTak (now Moj Lite) has a further 36 million.

For all of this, however, ShareChat’s revenues have historically not been much to write home about. In the year ended March 2021, the company’s total revenue stood at just Rs 96.4 crore, with losses ballooning to Rs 1446.5 crore, according to a valuation report the company filed in March 2022.