Homegrown regional social network, ShareChat, announced the completion of a $40 million pre-series E round of funding today. The company said the current funding round will be used to drive the growth of its new short-video platform Moj. ShareChat had launched the platform just over a day after the Indian government banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps in India.
The current round includes chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of Hero MotoCorp, Pawan Munjal, who invested in his personal capacity. DCM Shriram Promoters Family Office also invested in the platform, alongside existing investors. ShareChat’s current investors include social media platform Twitter, SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and India Quotient.
The company’s total funding till date now stands at $264 million and its valuation is over $650 million.
According to the company, ShareChat and Moj have 240 million monthly active users (MAUs) between them. Of these, over 160 million MAUs come from ShareChat, while Moj accounts for the rest. However, the short-video platform is a little over a month old right now, meaning it’s difficult to gauge the correct MAU count for it just yet.
Short-video platforms like ShareChat have been looking to capitalise on the absence of TikTok from India’s short-video space. The Chinese company still awaits a ruling from the Indian government on the ban it enforced after the Galwan Valley border clash with China. TikTok has been banned in India for just under two months now.
TikTok has also been facing a ban in the United States (US) after President Donald Trump forced the company to sell its operations to a US country. A deal, which makes technology giant Oracle TikTok’s tech partner for the US has been submitted to the US government, but reports say that while President Trump may agree to it, the Chinese government may oppose the deal.
In the meanwhile, industry experts say Times Internet-backed MX Taka Tak, ShareChat’s Moj and news aggregator DailyHunt’s Josh have been leading the Indian market in terms of user acquisition. Smaller companies like Mitron, Chingari and Bolo Indya have also been vying for attention since the ban.
