Tech Giant Google Sets Its Eyes On Social Media Startup Sharechat

• Tech giant Google is in advance talks to acquire social media startup Sharechat for $1.03 billion.
• Sharechat is developed and operated by Mohalla Tech Pvt. Ltd. 
• The platform has over 160 million monthly active users across 15 Indic languages.

Tech giant Google is in advance talks to acquire twitter-back social media platform Sharechat for $1.03 billion (or about Rs 7,632 crore).

In August 2020, Microsoft was reportedly looking to invest $100 million in exchange for some stakes in the startup.

The news comes after Sharechat recorded a 166% increase in its monthly active users from 60 million to 160 million across 15 Indic languages.

Although Sharechat declined to comment on the development, a Google spokesperson told ET Now that it doesn't comment on the market speculation and rumors.

Earlier in July 2020, Google had announced that it would invest $10 billion in the country through Google For India Digitization Fund.

In September 2020, Sharechat received $40 million from a chunk of investors, including Twitter, Lightspeed, Elevation, India Quotient, among others, as a part of Series E funding round at a valuation of $650 million.

Till date, the startup has raised over $260 million in a total of eight funding rounds, mostly participated by Lightspeed and Elevation Capital.

Recently, the startup had set up a research and development lab in Silicon Valley name Sharechat Labs to improve its research and product development.

The startup is currently valued at $650 million and is expected to reach $1 billion by next year.

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About Sharechat - Sharechat is a Bengaluru-based social media startup founded in 2015 developed by Mohalla Tech Pvt. Ltd. and founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan. Sharechat is an online platform that offers features like private messaging, tagging, personal messaging, enabling users to share content like videos, jokes, songs, and other language-based social content with other unknown users.

The platform started as a content sharing tool for Whatsapp users. Since then, the platform has gradually evolved into many Indic languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Gujrati, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, and Rajasthani.

In late June 2020, Sharechat launched a short video app called Moj. Currently, Moj has more than 80 million monthly active users.

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