The India-based social networking app ShareChat is becoming more popular and is about to raise over $100 million from different investors, including from the microblogging website Twitter. According to the sources, Twitter is leading a financing round for ShareChat and will be investing $50 million from itself in the company.
It will be the first international investment round for ShareChat, after which the company may value at $600-650 million. Along with Twitter, ShareChat’s existing investors will also be participating in the investment round. Those existing backers include Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital, Morningside Ventures, etc. Another Hongkong based firm named Hillhouse Capital will also be joining the investors for the round. According to sources, Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey will be directly involved in the process.
The investment round will help ShareChat grow as a leading social network against its rival company, and the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, which has got a firm hold on most of the Indian audience through its various subsidiaries, including TikTok and Helo. AMong which Helo is the biggest rival of ShareChat.
Before Twitter, ShareChat was in talks with the Chinese tech giant Tencent for the investment, which proved to be a failure, that too, twice in the period of one year. After Twitter will be leading the investments for ShareChat, it will get a minority stake in the latter’s shares. In fact, we can expect to see an integration of ShareChat into Twitter soon.
“Twitter never makes a minority investment of this kind, it is usually an acquisition. This is very significant for ShareChat looking at how the Chinese players especially ByteDance have been able to wean away users onto their platform,” said an investor tracking the segment.
The round of investment and partnership with Twitter can bring a lot of opportunities for ShareChat. In fact, the usual number of monthly users for ShareChat may rise above 30-35 million. Also, the company may monetise its platform to earn some profits and to improve the app after receiving the investments.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.