Bengaluru based content-sharing platform ShareChat announced on Thursday that it has raised $40 million from its existing investors-Twitter, Lightspeed, SAIF Partners and India Quotient Ventures in its Pre series E round. Hero MotoCorp and DCM Shriram-two new investors also participated in the new round of capital.
Hero MotoCorp’s CEO & Chairman Pawan Munjal and DCM Shriram’s Chairman Ajay Shridhar Shriram have invested in the startup through family Trust and DCM Shriram Promoters family Office respectively.
The new investment brings ShareChat’s to date raise to $264 Million.
The startup will utilize the fund for product development, bringing new creators on its platform, establishing partnerships with music label to aid growth of its short video app-Moj, the company said in a statement.
The startup claims ShareChat and Moj have over 240 million monthly active users. ShareChat allows its users to publish content in 15 regional languages like- Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Odia, Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, Urdu and others. The short video app Moj allows sharing of short videos. A user on an average spends about half an hour on the app each day, the startup claimed.
After TikTok’s ban in the country, various companies have launched their short-video apps in the country. DailyHunt and MX Player have launched Josh and TakaTak respectively. However, Moj can be seen dominating the short-form video apps market with a growth rate of 500000 new users per hour.
Ankush Sachdeva who is CEO and Co-founder of the company, he said “ShareChat is on a swift growth path and is spearheading the growth of the Indic language Indian social media landscape”. He also added “Our short-video platform Moj has been on an explosive growth trajectory since its launch.
Reuters last month also reported content sharing platform ShareChat is in talks with investors including United States-based Sequoia Capital to raise another $200 million, which could value the startup at over $1 bn.
