If you thought making memes did not pay anything, you’d have to think again. ShareChat, the Twitter-backed Indic language social media platform, has announced acquisition of relatively little known Memer, a meme sharing app. Financials remain undisclosed and Memer’s 8 member team will now join Sharechat.
The company will also integrate Memer’s product suite to that of Sharechat, in order to make things “more exciting” for its users.
Manohar Charan, VP – Corporate Development and Strategic Finance, ShareChat, said, “We are looking for inorganic opportunities to complement our organic efforts and power the growth engine. We are on active lookout for startups that complement our product capabilities and share the vision of serving diverse content and social needs of Indian masses. Memer happens to be the first step towards this approach.”
Charan further explained how Memer will help expand the product innovation for ShareChat, stating, “Memer compliments ShareChat’s product set and will help provide more power in the hand of creators on our platform.We are excited to welcome them to the ShareChat family. We invite more such startups to come forward and join us in the mission of bringing exciting consumer internet products to Bharat.”
Memer, which was found in 2018 by a group of three IIT-ians Amit Singh, Chetan Dalal and Chandramauli Singh, soon got backed up by Kae Capital. Since then, over a million original content has been created on the platform.
Amit Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Memer,said “We started Memer with a vision to enable original content creation among young Indian internet users better. In no time, the platform became popular across hindi-speaking markets with healthy hyper local communities. Gradually we discovered memes to be an excellent content format to stimulate hyperlocal communities across the country.”
He added that Memer was already looking for a bigger player to take its content to the masses.”…we needed a larger platform to supercharge the distribution of our product features. We were looking for a larger player who shares our passion for regional India, to take our innovation to the next level . We could not think of anyone better than ShareChat, the only company to have unlocked the magic of regional language. We are super excited to be part of ShareChat team.”
Navin Honagudi, MD of Kae Capital said that the firm invested in Memer when it was at the idea stage, adding that the platform “Memer” came into existence after 3 failed attempts. “The team has built a unique understanding of community building and content creation through their multiple product iterations over the last 2 years. We wish all the best to the Memer and ShareChat team in their growth journey,” he said.
ShareChat would continue to acquire/invest in more startups. The platform is fresh from receiving $100 Million from Twitter, having raised close to $224 Million in total. At the time of its previous fundraise, the platform claimed to have monthly active users (MAU) to the tune of 50 million, across 15 languages. It had then projected to ramp that number up to 120-150 million monthly over a 12-month period.
