Indian social media firm ShareChat has raised more than half a billion dollars to grow its popular short-video app Moj, just months after the Indian government banned ByteDance-owned rival TikTok from the country.
The five-year-old company, which has raised $502m from investors including Tiger Global Management, Snap and Twitter, now has a valuation of $2.1bn. The ShareChat app has 160m monthly active users, while Moj has amassed more than 120m monthly active users within nine months of its launch.
The Indian government’s ban of more than 200 Chinese apps late last year following a border dispute was a “macro event . . . and we did benefit from that,” said Ankush Sachdeva, chief executive of ShareChat, which also counts Shunwei Capital, launched by the founders of Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi, among its investors.