IIT-K alumni's social networking app has something that Facebook lacks, and it has got them half a million users already

As every budding entrepreneur today is thinking of pain points from where their business ideas can emerge, three Lucknow boys are already on their feet trying to connect underserved netizens who want to have social interactions in their language of choice.

Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva - all three of whom are IIT Kanpur passouts - have identified these users as non-metro audience who are widely unaddressed by the social products available in the market. They say Facebook or Twitter are serving a very niche audience in Indian society and not those who are still experimenting with the internet through their smartphones with limited data packs.

This lot, they said, wants to express themselves online but do not have a platform which allows them to interact in the comfort of their local languages. The trio then came down to the conclusion - if they were to give these people an alternative, this untouched market would nto shy away from communicating socially like others.

It is for this reason this trio soon started developing an app last year, and this led to the birth of 'Sharechat' - a one of its kind social networking app for India’s vernacular language users, what the founders would like to call "India's real Facebook".

The sheer success this app has got in the past few months indicates people were desperately seeking for such a platform. The app has been downloaded over 1 million times and it has half a million active monthly users. It started as a fun app for Whatsapp with users sharing 1 lakh content pieces per day, and has now made rapid strides towards becoming a full-fledged social network.

FEATURES:

- It allows users to share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images in Hindi, Telugu, Marathi and Malayalam.

- The developers plan to add some more languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil and Kannada soon.

- ShareChat currently allows users to follow each other, create and find content in their language of preference and share them on all possible chat platforms.

- The developers are also planning to add new content formats like live events and games.

- It provides funniest Indian videos, best jokes, memes like Bakchodi Billi, Troll cricket and other latest and best funny jokes and funny videos.

- Latest music videos, songs and Indian cinema and TV ads are also available with updates on Tamil, Bollywood, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali movies and songs.

- It also gives daily horoscope, astrology in all Indian languages by birth date, kundli match service, news in Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, love quotes, tips to dress well and how to prepare for interviews.

- The app also provides health tips on how to cure yourself with home-made remedies, lose weight, religious quotes and dictionary.

Notably, ShareChat recently made its way to the top six apps in the second batch of Google Launchpad Accelerator programme- a six-month mentorship programme in California. The programme includes $50,000 equity-free funding, two-week all-expenses paid bootcamp and access to Google Cloud.