Sharechat gets $49 million funding from investors, aims to be profitable in…
Social media unicorn ShareChat raised $48.89 million in a round led by Tencent and Lightspeed. The round, amid a funding winter for tech startups, saw the participation of HarbourVest, Moore Strategic Ventures, Rimco and Alkeon. In the last funding round, Sharechat was valued at almost $5 billion while its peers in the social media space- X (formerly Twitter) and Snap- witnessed large drops in valuation.
In December 2023, Sharechat fired 200 employees- almost 15 percent of its workforce- which was the second such move last year. The company said that it attempts to cut costs and achieve profitability within the next four to six quarters after which it laid off around 600 employees in 2024.
Co-founders of the company Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan also stepped down after raising $3 million in seed funding from venture capital firms India Quotient, Elevation Capital and other angel investors for their startup General Autonomy.
The company is backed by investors such as X (formerly Twitter), Google, Lightspeed and Temasek. Its revenue increased by 59 per cent to ₹553 crore in FY23 from the previous year, the company’s annual financial report showed.
During the same period, the company’s net losses shot up 72 per cent to ₹5,144 crore owing to rising server rents, financing costs, foreign exchange losses, it said.
