ShareChat raised a $300m funding round, backed by Google, media company Times Group and Singaporean state-backed investor Temasek, which valued the Indian social media at $5bn.
It is the latest sign of growing interest in Indian media companies. Corporate-backed funding rounds in the media sector topped $1bn last year, and this year looks on track to outpace that.
This is Google’s second investment in Indian short video platforms, having taken part in a $100m round for Josh, which competes with ShareChat’s sister company Moj.
Following India’s permanent ban of video platform TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps in January after a deadly confrontation at the countries’ Himalayan border, domestic rivals like Moj and Josh rose in popularity.
ShareChat operates a social media platform available in 15 local languages and dialects, currently boasting 180m monthly active users. Catering to India’s multilingual population has given the company a foothold in a market typically dominated by larger international companies.
Corporate-backed deals in India-based media technology companies have been steadily rising in terms of deal count since 2017, according to GCV data, and with 18 deals already in the books – not including this latest one – 2022 is on pace to outdo 2021’s 27 deals.
The amount raised in deals has been more erratic, with a peak of $458m in 2018 dipping down to $353m by 2020 before exploding to over $1bn last year. ShareChat’s new round singlehandedly almost doubles the amount invested in 2022 so far.
ShareChat’s latest raise marks the second-largest round for a media startup in India in the last half-decade, the largest being ShareChat’s previous round, an initial series E round that hauled in $502m in April last year from investors including social media platforms Twitter and Snap and internet group Tencent.
ShareChat also holds India’s third-largest media funding round in five years with the $266m series G round it closed in December at a valuation of $3.7bn, which followed a $145m series G round last July.
