Twitter-backed ShareChat acquires social commerce startup Elanic
As part of the agreement, all Elanic employees would now join ShareChat and the startup's founders will hold senior roles at the Twitter-backed company.
The Bengaluru-based regional language social media platform has acquired , a peer to peer (P2P) marketplace for fashion and lifestyle goods.
As part of the agreement, all Elanic employees would now join ShareChat and the startup's founders will hold senior roles at the Twitter-backed company.
“The Elanic team brings with them deep insights and expertise in understanding commerce trends and consumer preferences across India. ShareChat hopes to leverage this in areas of content delivery and social commerce and positively contribute to product advancement,” said the company in a statement.
ShareChat Founders (L to R): Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva
Founded by Abhilash Narahari and Palkush Rai Chawla in 2015, Elanic is a social marketplace where anyone can buy and sell clothes.
In its statement, ShareChat said Elanic app, which is available for Android users, has seen over five million downloads with close to one million active listings. In 2015, it had raised a seed round of funding from Singapore-based Japanese venture capital firm Rebright Partners, Tracxn Labs, and angel investor Aneesh Reddy.
This development comes just weeks after ShareChat launched a fantasy sports app Jeet11, which is focussed on cricket and football matches for now, and has already amassed more than 120,000 registered users.
Owned and operated by Mohalla Tech Private Ltd, ShareChat secured $100 million in August 2019 in Series D round led by Twitter.
Other than Twitter, TrustBridge Partners and existing investors Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital participated in the funding round.
The company, which has about 60 million monthly active users (MAUs), aims to double its userbase by December this year.
Founded by IIT Kanpur alumni Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan, and Bhanu Singh in 2015, ShareChat allows users to discover and share content in Indian languages. At present, it offers its services in 15 Indian languages including Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and Bhojpuri.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)