India Quotient-backed Sharechat joins unicorn club at a valuation of $2.1 billion

• Sharechat has raised $502 million in new funding round at a valuation of $2.1 billion.
• The round was led by Tiger Global, Lightspeed Ventures, Snap Inc, Twitter, and India Quotient.
• Prior to this, CRED, Meesho, API Holdings, and Groww has joined the unicorn startup list this week.

Homegrown social media startup Sharechat has raised $502 million (about Rs 3,761 crore) in new funding round at a valuation of $2.1 billion, making it the ninth startup that achieved unicorn status this year.

The funding round saw participation from California-based Lightspeed Ventures, Tiger Global, Twitter, Snap Inc, and India Quotient. India Quotient is an early investor in the startup.

Sharechat will use the funding to grow its user base and will look forward to strengthening its creator community, and building a robust AI-powered content ecosystem, the statement said.

With this round, the vernacular language social media platform has achieved the unicorn startup status after Meesho, CRED, Pharmeasy parent API Holdings, and Groww, which raised million dollar funding this week.

Previously, It had raised $60 million in debt from Twitter Ventures, a fund that aims to invest in startups that boost Twitter's revenue stream. So far, the social media platform has raised over $824 million in its funding rounds. In November 2020, It was reported that tech giant Google was eyeing Sharechat for an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion.

Founded in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, Sharechat, which owns and operates Moj, allows users to share content like videos, jokes, images, songs, and other language-based social content with other unknown users on its platform.

Commenting on the development, Ankush Sachdeva, Co-Founder & CEO, said, "Excited to share that we have raised $502mn at $2.1bn valuations from Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Snap, Twitter, and others."

This capital will help us accelerate our journey of building India's largest AI-powered content ecosystem, he added.

As the internet penetration further deepens in India we are well-positioned to expand our ecosystem of products to 1 Billion+ MAUs cumulatively, the company said in a statement.

Speaking on the investment, Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global, said, "We are impressed with the team’s understanding of these rapidly evolving technologies and its ability to execute quickly, and we are excited to partner with them as they continue to build a great company."

The new unicorn startup counts SAIF Partners, LightSpeeed Ventures, Pawan Munjal (Hero MotoCorp), Ajay Shriram (CII), Xiaomi, 5Y Capital, Trustbridge Partners, and Google Launchpad Accelerator as investors.

Follow IndianStartupNews on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for the latest updates from the startup ecosystem.