BackShareChat parent gets $145 mn in round led by Temasek, MSV
With the current fundraise, Mohalla Tech’s valuation jumped to $2.88 bn from $2.1 bn in April
PremiumBENGALURU: Mohalla Tech, the parent company behind Moj and ShareChat, has raised an additional $145 million as an extension to its Series F round led by Singapore state investor Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV) and Mirae-Naver Asia Growth Fund.
This over and above the $502 million the company raised in April this year, led by venture capital firms Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global. The previous round also saw participation of social media giants Twitter and Snap Inc.
With the current fundraise, Mohalla Tech is valued at $2.88 billion, up from the $2.1 billion valuation it was ascribed to earlier in April this year.
According to the company, investments raised this year, including the latest, will help the company double down on its strategic priorities of building the best artificial intelligence (AI) feed; attracting and incentivising diverse creator base.
In recent months, the company has hired senior executives in the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI) domain in the UK and the US.
Founded in October 2015, the social media company has raised close to $911 million over seven funding rounds so far.
“This additional investment for Series F is a validation of our market leadership and a reflection of investor trust in our execution capabilities. We are immensely proud of what we have been able to achieve with Moj and ShareChat in the last 12 months. We have been very fortunate to attract a bunch of very high quality names in our series F and the list just got longer with Temasek, MSV and Mirae-Naver joining hands with us," said Ankush Sachdeva, chief executive officer and co-founder, Moj and ShareChat.
“To strengthen our leadership position, we will continue to invest in our AI capabilities, scaling our global AI org, building advanced editing tools and helping our creators monetize on the platform," added Sachdeva.
ShareChat, launched almost six years ago, is a local-language based social media app which allows users to share content and videos in their preferred regional languages. The company claims that ShareChat has 180 million users at present, with more 32 million creators, creating content in almost 15 Indic languages.
The company also launched its short video platform, Moj, last year to fill in the gap left by Chinese social media giant TikTok after its ban by the Indian government. In a year, Moj claims to have collected 160 million users consuming content created by more than 50 million creators on its platform.
Moj at present witnesses more than 100 million short video content created on its platform on a monthly basis, the company said. The daily average time spent on ShareChat and Moj stands at above 30 minutes.
“We are excited to partner with Moj as they build India’s premier short form video platform, and have been impressed by this management team’s speed and agility in capturing the opportunity. This round will help to accelerate that growth and allow Moj and ShareChat to continue to develop the best ecosystem for content creators and consumers alike," said James McIntyre, senior managing director and chief operating officer at MSV.
Moj, at present competes with other domestic short video apps including- InMobi’s Roposo, news startup DailyHunt’s Josh and Times Internet-owned MX Taka Tak.
Mint reported in June that Moj had 47.78 million monthly active users (MAUs), followed by Times Internet’s MX TakaTak at 23.95 million, Dailyhunt’s Josh at 14 million and InMobi’s Roposo at 5.51 million, according to MAU data from digital intelligence platform SimilarWeb.
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
