[Funding alert] ShareChat raises $100M in Series D from Twitter, TrustBridge, and existing investors

ShareChat, a Bengaluru-based regional language social platform, on Friday announced it has raised $100 million in its Series D round of funding. Twitter and TrustBridge Partners are two new investors joining this latest funding round.

Existing investors who participated in this round include Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient, and Morningside Venture Capital. This brings the total capital secured by the company till date to $224 million. 

This is not the first time Twitter has made an investment in an Indian company. In January 2015, it acquired ZipDial (also from Bengaluru), a company that developed an innovative platform that turns missed calls into mobile marketing and analytics product. The amount was undisclosed, but according to reports the transaction was estimated between $40 and $50 million. 

In a statement, ShareChat said this new round of funding will help to strengthen the technology infrastructure for its platform as the company looks to scale its business. Additionally, ShareChat will acquire talent to help propel the exchange of ideas among its strategic partners. To accelerate the internet ecosystem in India, the company will also be introducing more features to make the experience seamless across devices.

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Ankush Sachdeva, CEO, ShareChat ​said, 

“This is a very exciting time for us at ShareChat as we see our platform growing rapidly. With this new round of funding, we are positioned to take the next leap in our growth story. As we scale up, our focus remains to help the ShareChat community better express themselves in the comfort of their native language.”

Founded by IIT-Kanpur alumni Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan, and Bhanu Singh in 2015, ShareChat allows users to share their opinions, record their lives and make new friends - all within the comfort of their native language. 

The platform, which has 60 million users, currently offers its services in 14 languages - Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and Bhojpuri.

Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director, Twitter India, said, 

“Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners.”

Last year, ShareChat had raised Rs 720 crore ($100 million) in a funding round led by existing investor Shunwei Capital, at a valuation of $460 million (Rs 3,332 crore). 

In March 2019, it acquired Transversal Tech-owned video sharing app Clip in all cash deal.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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