According to individuals familiar with details of sale discussions, the holding company of India’s ShareChat reportedly raised approximately $300M in new funding from Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ : GOOG) Google, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and media behemoth Times Group pricing the chat platform at almost $5 billion. The insiders revealed that an agreement could be signed as soon as the coming week.
Google makes second investment in brief video sharing industry
Mohalla Tech, ShareChat’s owners, did not reply to a call for comment. Equally requests for comments from Temasek and Google weren’t immediately returned with Reuters also unable to reach the Times Group for a comment.
This will be Google’s second big investment in India’s brief video industry, having originally supported Josh, which rivals with ShareChat’s sibling brand Moj. Moj looks like TikTok and allows users to make videos of between 15 seconds and one minute.
According to an insider, Google’s commitment to a bear market for India’s start-ups demonstrates the demand for the brief video sector and the start-up’s investment proposition. India’s digital firms have been trying to raise cash after realizing a whopping $35B in additional capital last year, as governance practices worry cloud large for funders facing growing market volatility.
India blocked TikTok following a border dispute leading to the popularity of the short video app
After a border dispute with the Chinese in 2020, India blocked ByteDance’s TikTok plus other Chinese apps, leading to the rise of brief video applications like Josh and Moj.
ShareChat has close 180 million active monthly users presently. The app is available in five languages and has over 32 million creators. One of the sources said that Moj and Mohalla’s recently acquired MX TakaTak have around 300 million combined users.
Following a Tamasek and Alkeon Capital led funding round, in which Sharechat raised $266 million it was worthy at $3.7 billion. Snap and Twitter are also Sharechat investors.
If Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter succeeds, Musk could have a 6% to 8% interest in ShareChat, according to sources.
