Shubham Sawarkar
The parent company of India’s ShareChat has raised almost $300 million in new capital from Alphabet Inc‘s Google, media giant Times Group, and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, valuing the social media platform at nearly $5 billion. According to the sources, a deal might be announced as soon as next week.
After funding Josh, which competes with ShareChat’s sister company Moj, this is Google’s second major investment in India’s short video industry.
According to one of the sources, Google’s investment in a bearish market for Indian start-ups shows the demand for the short video industry as well as the start-investment up’s thesis. India’s digital firms have been struggling to raise funding, after raising a record $35 billion in new funds in 2021, as corporate governance concerns loom large for investors facing increased currency fluctuations.
Following a border conflict with China, India 2020 blocked ByteDance‘s TikTok and some other Chinese apps, resulting in the rise of short video apps like Moj and Josh.
ShareChat has 180 million monthly active users at the moment. According to one of the sources, Moj and Mohalla‘s recently acquired MX TakaTak has a combined user base of 300 million.
In a $266 million fundraising round led by Alkeon Capital and Temasek, ShareChat was last valued at $3.7 billion. Twitter and Snap are also investors in the company.
If Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s proposal to buy Twitter succeeds, Musk may have a stake in ShareChat of between 6% and 8%, according to the source.
