Popular Indian social network ShareChat is garnering the attention of the tech biggies in the block.
It is reported that ShareChat, in which Twitter invested in 2019, is now set up in advanced talks to raise funds from Google and Snapchat. Further it is said that existing investors like Twitter may also chip in with more funds.
The Series E financing round, for which ShareChat is valued at more than $1 billion, may fetch the company more than $200 million. Google alone may put $100 million on the table for it.
ShareChat had raised $40 million in a pre-Series E round in September.
As technology adoption grows in India, US tech biggies are eyeing India with renewed interest.
Till September last, ShareChat had exceeded over 160 million MAUs with the average daily time spent by users on the platform at 31 minutes while its short video app Moj had over 80 million MAUs (Monthly Active Users).
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Snapchat, Twitter eye India's rural market through ShareChat
ShareChat has significant traction in Tier 2 and 3 Indian cities where social networks like Snapchat and Twitter have struggled to gain users.
Meanwhile, Google was earlier in talks with ShareChat for a potential acquisition. But as it happened, Google pumped in dollars into ShareChat’s competitors Dailyhunt and InMobi’s Glance last month.
Dailyhunt and InMobi halso have short video apps — Josh and Roposo --- that are rivals in the market to ShareChat’s Moj.
After the ban of TikTok in India, indigenous short video apps have had a field day. Moj was one of the top three most downloaded apps between October and November. Josh was downloaded more than 12 million times followed by Moj’s 8.14 million and MX TakaTak’s 6.9 million during the one month period.
