Sharechat raises $502 mn to build India's largest AI-powered content ecosystem

Bengaluru based Mohalla Tech that owns the Indian social media platform ShareChat and short-video platform Moj has raised $502 mn at a US$2.1 bn valuation from Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Twitter, Snap and other investors.

ShareChat, overall, has close to 160 million monthly active users across 15 local languages—including Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali and Assamese. Moj, which was launched after the ban on TikTok in India, has scaled to 120 million monthly active users in just nine months.

Ankush Sachdeva

Announcing the latest round of funding, the co-founder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva said in a post on medium, “We are at a significant inflection point in our company’s journey — as the internet penetration further deepens in India we are well-positioned to expand our ecosystem of products to 1 Billion+ MAUs cumulatively.”

Talking about the growth and the investment plan, he further added, “With this infusion of capital we would continue to aggressively grow our user base, build a world-class org in India & US and further strengthen our creator community, AI-powered recommendation engine and platform health.”

Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global said, “As Internet penetration increases, ShareChat’s leading content creation platform is poised to expand dramatically by bridging into online purchases of goods and services. Additionally, 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.”

Ravi Mhatre, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners said, "We are excited to witness the market-leading growth of Sharechat's short video product Moj over the past year, with adoption in metro cities, towns and villages across the length and breadth of India. Lightspeed globally is honoured to double down on its partnership with Sharechat to build one of India's iconic consumer Internet companies."

Dev Khare, Partner, Lightspeed India, said, "ShareChat’s rise to market leadership in India's social media category has been an accelerating journey involving category creation, world-class team building and product-led growth. At Lightspeed, we are excited to have backed Ankush, Bhanu and Farid in every round from the Series A in 2016 onwards."

Founded in 2015, Mohalla Tech has now successfully raised over US$766 million across 6 fundraising rounds, enabling ShareChat to substantially grow and differentiate itself by delivering a unique, tech-led social media experience. Furthermore, Moj, which launched in July 2020, has already made huge strides towards leadership in the short video space. Moj and ShareChat together, with a 280 million-strong user community, envision building a cohesive AI-powered content ecosystem to address India’s growing digital needs.

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