The Twitter backed Indian social media platform, ShareChat is expected to add two more tech giants to its portfolio as part of its Series E fund raise. A report from TechCrunch states that Alphabet-owned Google and Snapchat’s parent company Snap are in talks to invest in the Indian social media startup.
ShareChat has been one of few social media startups from India to survive the cut-throat market. It caters to the Indian market in 15 different languages and has garnered over 80 million MAUs, which, on an average, spend about 34 minutes on the platform daily. Moreover, the company is also promoting its other app Moj, which is a short video platform.
More and more TikTok alternatives have been emerging in the country ever since the app was banned in India in the summer of 2020, the most prominent of them being Instagram’s Reels. However, the Facebook owned app has failed to captivate all of TikTok’s users, and lesser known alternatives like Moj have gained some serious traction in the last few months.
For this reason, and to expand the main app ShareChat, the company has been raising capital left and right.
In fact, the company just completed its Pre-Series E fundraise, which saw investments from the likes of Pawan Munjal, the Managing Director of Hero MotoCorp, DCM Shriram Promoters Family Office, SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and India Quotient. Ankush Sachdeva, CEO & Cofounder of the startup had said that the investment would help improve their product development and machine learning capabilities.
“ShareChat and Moj together form one of the largest content ecosystems in the country, offering a great experience to the users and enabling brands to engage with the audience deeply. We extend our gratitude to every investor, partner and team-member who has been a part of our growth story” Sachdeva said during the pre-series E round.
However, if the talks with Google and Snap finalize, ShareChat might be able to add more than $200 million to its name, as sources claim that Google alone is ready to invest $100 million.
Moreover, if the deals come to fruition, it will be the first investment of Evan Spiegel-led Snap in an Indian market. Google, on the other hand, is no newbie to the Indian startup, and has recently led multi million dollar funding rounds in DailyHunt and Glance.
