Denis Opudo
Founded in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Singh and Farid Ahsan alumni of IIT-Kanpur ShareChat have raised almost $24 million up to now since its launch. ShareChat startup is looking forward to having one of the biggest investment deals in Africa. This comes after the African social platform secured funds from Shunwei Venture Capital Company and Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer at the end of 2017. It got funds worth $75 million from the two firms. Considering the information we obtained from three different reliable sources, the firm will receive investment proposal from top global financial and strategic investors. This includes Naspers which is a South African media company, the owner of We-Chat, other investment companies Morningside Ventures and DST Global Hillhouse Capital, Amazon, and China-based online media houses Kwai and Toutiao.
The deal will increase the startup valuation in 4-5 times to $400 million within a period of less than six months. One of the high investors who have interest in ShareChats highlighted how social networks and digital media targeting the new users of the internet is getting a wide coverage as funding environment increases. One of the sources said that the startup is in talks to raise around $100 million. Besides, the existing investors like Shunwei and Xiaomi are also willing to invest in the round. However, the startup has not yet finalized the investors who will take part in the round. The deal is expected to take some time before it is finalized. However, the company is expected to bring on board, two new investors. The startup’s other investors comprise Venture Partners, India Quotien and SAIF Partners.
Sharechat has experienced a massive growth in the last few months due to the availability of cheap data. This has increased the time taken by the uses on the internet more so those who prefer using vernacular language. The number of active users on daily basis on the platform has gone up from one million to five million within the last two quarters. The startup’s funding round is increasing drastically. Amount channelled across series A, B, and C funding into firms increased by 73% year-on-year to $850 million in the Q1 of 2018. Furthermore, the number of deals went high from 30% to 76%.
VC investors are in a high rush to close up the deals due to available interest from global strategic investors like Alibaba and Tencent from China and SA based Naspers for following of investment. ShareChat intends to increase its daily active customer base by a double-digit to 10 million. It is also aiming at making more footprints into the micro markets that include then Northern region. It’s prioritizing this before working on monetizing its services in 2019. The startup has worked on increasing its users’ activities by launching a number of chat options, direct messaging and other different features. More than 65% of the startup’s user base comprises of individuals aged between 14 to 22 years. Currently, users spend not less than 17 seconds on the application every week.
