Social Networking startup ShareChat raises funds

By Raaghav G R

Posted on January 19, 2018

ShareChat is a Bengaluru-based social networking (live chat) startup. The startup announced yesterday (18/01/2018) that it has raised US $18.2 million (Rs. 118.3 crores) in Series B round of funding from the Chinese firms, Xiaomi and ShunWei Capital. The funds raised would be invested in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technologies.

ShareChat is an Android OS-based live chat app which is available for free download in ten of India’s regional languages including English.

“Vernacular content consumption in India has witnessed a meteoric rise in the past two years growing from 42 million in 2011 to 234 million in 2016. To capitalise on this, we at ShareChat, aim to use innovative technology in order to optimise social media content for this new set of Indian users”, said Farid Ahsan, co-founder of ShareChat.

According to Economic Times, ShareChat had in November 2016, raised US $4 million (Rs. 26 crores) in Series A round of funding from the same investors. The other social networking startups to get funded last year (2017) include the parental social networking startup, Tinystep, which raised US $2 million (Rs. 13 crores) in Pre Series round of funding from the e-commerce giant, Flipkart during January, last year. The social networking and fashion e-commerce startup, Roposo, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by IAN during December 2016 just to name a few.

Social Networking startup ShareChat raises funds