[Funding alert] ShareChat raises $40M in pre-Series E round led by Twitter, SAIF, Lightspeed Ventures

ShareChat, the Bengaluru-headquartered social media platform, has closed its pre-Series E funding round by raising $40 million, led by existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Twitter, and SAIF Partners, along with new entities.

The other investors in this round include Pawan Munjal of the Hero Group in his personal capacity, DCM Shriram Promoters Family Office, and India Quotient. Following this latest round, ShareChat’s total funding now stands at $264 million.

According to the startup, this latest round of funding will be utilised for its newly-launched short video platform – Moj. Besides, there will also be investments towards product development, growth of creator ecosystem, and establishing partnerships with music labels.

On the funding, ShareChat CEO and Co-founder Ankush Sachdeva said, “ShareChat is on a rapid growth path and is spearheading the growth of the Indic language Indian social media landscape. Our short-video platform Moj has been on an explosive growth trajectory since its launch. This funding will help us further invest into our product development, ML capabilities, and helping the creator community.”

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According to the startup, ShareChat and Moj together have over 240 million monthly active users (MAUs) presently. It said, ShareChat itself has exceeded over 160 million MAUs in the past month with the average daily time spent by users on the platform being 31 minutes. Moj has garnered over 80 million MAUs with users spending on an average about 34 minutes on the platform.

In the previous Series D funding round, Twitter led the investment with additional backing from ShareChat's existing investors — SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures, and India Quotient.

On the investment, Mayank Khanduja of SAIF Partners said, “Today, we are excited for the path ahead for both Moj and Sharechat as we foresee Moj becoming a global platform. We are delighted to reaffirm our support to the company in this financing round."