India’s ShareChat valued at $2.88 billion in $145 million fundraise

Indian social media platform ShareChat said on Tuesday it has raised an additional $145 million and is now valued at nearly $3 billion, less than three months after it secured $502 million at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Temasek and Moore Strategic Ventures led the new tranche of investment while Mirae-Naver Asia Growth fund participated in the new financing round (Series F), the Bangalore-based startup said. TechCrunch reported earlier this month that six-year-old ShareChat was in talks to raise at around $2.8 billion valuation. ShareChat, which has now raised over $911 million to date, has closed the Series F financing round, it said.

“This additional investment for Series F is a validation of our market leadership and a reflection of investor trust in our execution capabilities. We are immensely proud of what we have been able to achieve with Moj and ShareChat in the last 12 months,” said Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and chief executive of video app Moj and ShareChat.

“We have been very fortunate to attract a bunch of very high quality names in our series F and the list just got longer with Temasek, MSV and Mirae-Naver joining hands with us.”

In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Sachdeva said the short video app Moj, which the startup launched last year shortly after New Delhi banned TikTok citing cybersecurity concerns, is the fastest growing product within the firm and he expects it to be bigger that ShareChat one day.

ShareChat, which claims to have more than 160 million users, offers its social network app in 15 Indian languages and has a large following in small Indian cities and towns, or what venture capitalist Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures refers to as “India 2.”

Very few players in the Indian startup ecosystem have a reach to this segment of this population, which thanks to users from even smaller towns and villages — called “India 3” — getting online has expanded in recent years.

Moj, on the other hand, competes with a handful of players, including Times Internet’s MX TakaTak, as well as Glance’s Roposo and DailyHunt’s Josh — both of which received funding from Google late last year. The search giant was also in talks to invest in ShareChat late last year, TechCrunch reported earlier.

“With a monthly active user base of 160 million and 50+ million strong creator community, Moj in a year has grown into India’s number one short video app. To strengthen our leadership position, we will continue to invest in our AI capabilities, scaling our global AI org, building advanced editing tools and helping our creators monetize on the platform,” said Sachdeva, adding that the short video app clocks 4.5 billion views each day and a user typically spends about 34 minutes with the app daily.

TechCrunch also reported earlier that Twitter had held talks to acquire majority stakes in ShareChat and expand the Moj app globally.

“We are excited to partner with Moj as they build India’s premier short form video platform, and have been impressed by this management team’s speed and agility in capturing the opportunity. This round will help to accelerate that growth and allow Moj and ShareChat to continue to develop the best ecosystem for content creators and consumers alike,” said James McIntyre, Senior Managing Director and COO at MSV, in a statement.