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<ul><li>ShareChat has raised a total of $224 million, with the latest Series D funding of $100 million from Twitter</li><li>The platform is now looking at starting its monetization journey and is reaching out to brands that could advertise on its platform</li><li>The platform’s aim is to get every Indian on to the internet, to a social network of its choice where they can converse in a language they are comfortable in</li></ul>It’s been four years since ShareChat, India’s homegrown regional social networking platform came into being. The platform came into the limelight after it raised $100 million funding in Series-D from Twitter, bringing the total raised in funding to $224 million. The company that was founded in 2015 by CEO Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, currently has a strong user base of 60 million. It hasn’t been making any money till now, because according to Sunil Kamat, Chief Business Officer, ShareChat, the platform was in the growth-hack mode. As the platform is now starting its monetization journey, it is not only reaching out to brands to partner with them but also planning a major hiring spree. It plans to expand its team from its current strength of 250 to 400 within the next three to four months. While they haven’t put a target figure to where they want to be in the next few years, Kamath shares that for them, the priority is to get more and more people onto the internet and present them with a platform where they are comfortable conversing and sharing their opinions. Edited excerpts: Q) It’s been four years since ShareChat started its journey. How has it been so far? We came into being four years ago, before the data revolution happened. Our journey has been pretty impactful till now. Our co-founders saw a gap in the social media landscape early on and saw a large opportunity for a regional social platform, and that’s where it all began. It's good to be early in the space and we are glad to be at the forefront of change because a lot of people are now trying to mimic our platform. It's a good feeling. Q) How big is the team right now, and how do you plan to scale it up? We will be hiring a lot of talent for the company across various units. Our strength is currently at 250, which we plan to scale up to 400 in the next four months. Q) You say you aren’t chasing targets right now. What are you in it for then? One thing that India has been missing is the ability to get everybody on board. For us, it’s about getting every Indian user to be on a social network of his choice and to make him comfortable with his language. What motivates us is the thought of bringing every Indian user to the Internet and thereby help improve his quality of life over a period of time. Q) What has your revenue model been so far? Our revenue model will be ad-based. Till now, we have been completely focused on growth. However, we are not in this for the short-tem. Our aim is to become one of the largest social networks in India, which means we will be heavily acquisition-based. Now that we have acquired users, it's good to open up to partners, to reach the audience. It's good for our audience too, as they have brands coming on board that they can interact with brands. We will end up building our own journey because it's always been that way for us. We never had parallel system to look up to. But people tend to replicate ShareChat’s journey which is overwhelming. Q) While you’ve been in existence for four years, you haven’t spoken about the platform too much. How have you been reaching out to your audience? Our audience belongs to the Tier II, III and IV markets, so we come up with a lot of regional communication. It's about who you want to communicate to. If I wanted to attract the investor community, I would talk to the mainline media. We are doing a lot of work in the regional side; we work with a network where we get access to regional print, television. However, now that we are starting to monetize the platform, you will see a lot more of us. We were in this growth hack mode all these years and didn’t have too much to talk about. We were just putting our heads together, getting the product fitment right, the initial engagement metrics in place and then scaling up with the acquisition of consumers and audience retention. That journey continues. Now we are aiming at accelerating the reach for the platform, getting people to know about ShareChat and build monetization opportunities for the platform, to see how we can get brands to engage with audiences because it’s a fairly new audience for them as well. Q) You have seen good growth in terms of your consumer base. What have you done right? As a platform, we are very data and insights driven. Since we are a User Generated Content platform, our consumers create content for other users to consume. So, a lot of our learning comes from our users. We see people behaving in a certain manner and modify our platform according to the needs of our consumers. We have a comment section on the platform where we observed people started asking for each other’s numbers and other details. Seeing this, we enabled a chat feature. We also observe the kind of content people are consuming on the platform. Sometimes, a nicely edited content might necessarily not do as well as another piece of normal content that people connect better with. So, these are the insights which we pick up. We unlearn and learn again and that's what keeps us going. Q) Going ahead, what will be your marketing strategy? A lot of our marketing will be focused on driving engagement for consumer on content. We will focus on encouraging consumers to use our camera feature. On the other side, we want to build monetization through brands and marketing channels. Q) Have you seen a lot of interest from marketers? We are still at a very early stage because we are just starting that journey now. I have met top FMCG brands and had amazing conversations. They are the ones who are giving us ideas about how they can use the platform. This is probably the first time that brands will have the ability to put up ads in 14-15 languages on a single platform. It's a challenge and an opportunity at the same time because I don't think digital agencies are equipped to run campaigns in more than a few languages. Q) Are you planning to expand to more languages? As a country, we have 22 official languages. We would love to evaluate a language on the basis of what it brings to the table, whether there’s a significant upside of that language. We have also done dialects like Rajasthani, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri because we are a very visual platform in terms of content. We recently brought in Urdu too. We are currently building a team of people who would be well-versed in these languages too, to be able to help consumers. We have teams for various languages and each of them has learning of their own language. What works in 'A' might not work in 'B' but could work in 'C'. So, they work independently, but there is a lot of common understanding of engaging content. Q) With this new round of funding coming in, what will your key focus areas be? The new round of funding hasn’t changed things much at our end. It's more of a financial transaction at this stage but with every round you raise, you become more responsible, towards your shareholders, and investors. So, we really have to make sure that we have very good stories.

ShareChat is growing its team from 250 to 400 as it moves to monetize its 60 million user base

<ul><li><keyword id="6357120" type="DEFINITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="paytm">Paytm</keyword> founder <keyword id="198636" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vijay-Shekhar-Sharma">Vijay Shekhar Sharma</keyword> is the only startup guy to be in the top 50 of the list. </li><li>Hurun Report India and IIFL Wealth Management have released the 8th edition of IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2019. </li><li>He is joined by others like Byju Raveendran, Sachin Bansal, Nithin Kamath, Binny Bansal in the list.</li></ul>Hurun Report India and IIFL Wealth Management have released the 8th edition of IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2019. While the obvious Mr Ambani tops the list, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the only startup guy to be in the top 50 of the list. Sharma has a net wealth of ₹20,400 crores, according to the report. Sharma holds rank 41 in the list which has 953 entrants. He even ranks higher than Sunil Mittal of Airtel, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon and Anand Mahindra of Mahindra Group. The billionaire entrepreneur is joined by others like Byju Raveendran, Sachin Bansal, Nithin Kamath, Binny Bansal in the list. Average wealth of the list is around ₹5,300 crores and the average age is 60 In 2017, Sharma was ranked as India’s youngest billionaire by Forbes. Paytm is the leading digital payments company in India. The parent company One97 communications houses 2 unicorns Paytm and Paytm Mall. The third subsidiary Paytm Money is also in its way to become a unicorn.

Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma is wealthier than Sunil Mittal, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Anand Mahindra and several others

New Delhi, India's top billionaires, including Gautam Adani and Sunil Bharti Mittal, mega stars from film industry such as Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan and cricketing icons from Sachin Tendulkar to M S Dhoni are among those invited for pre-wedding celebrations of Mukesh Ambani's youngest son, Anant early next month. Ahead of the wedding ceremony in July, guests from around the world have been invited to three-day pre-wedding festivities beginning March 1, at Gujarat's Jamnagar, which houses Ambani's mega oil refineries. Anant Ambani, the youngest of the three children Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani have, is set to marry Radhika Merchant - the younger daughter of <keyword id="20720133" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="viren-merchant" source="keywords">Viren Merchant</keyword>, CEO of Encore Healthcare, and entrepreneur Shaila Merchant. With Jamnagar not having five-star hotels, ultra-luxury tents housing best of facilities, including tiled bathrooms are being erected for the guests. The guest list includes international business leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Adnoc CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, and EL Rothschild chair Lynn Forester de Rothschild, sources said. Indian business magnates invited include Gautam Adani and family, Tata Sons chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran , Aditya Birla Group Chairperson Kumar Mangalam Birla, and his family, Godrej family, Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani, RPSG Group head Sanjiv Goenka, Wipro's Rishad Premji, banker <keyword id="19998917" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="uday-kotak" source="keywords">Uday Kotak</keyword>, vaccine maker Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla, Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal, Hero's Pawan Munjal, Roshni Nadar of HCL, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala and Sun Pharma's Dilip Sanghi. Top cricketers, including Sachin Tendulkar and family, MS Dhoni and family, Rohit Sharma, K L Rahul, Hardik and Krunal Pandya and Ishan Kishan too are on the invitee list. <keyword id="19897820" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="bollywood" source="keywords">Bollywood</keyword> will be represented by mega stars Amitabh Bachchan and family, Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan and family, Amir Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna, Ajay Devgn and Kajol, Saif Ali Khan and family, Chunky Pandey, Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt and <keyword id="19895145" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="vicky-kaushal" source="keywords">Vicky Kaushal</keyword> and Katrina Kaif. Madhuri Dikshit and Sriram Nene, Aditya and Rani Chopra, Karan Johar, Boney Kapoor and family, Anil Kapoor and family, <keyword id="19946417" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="varun-dhawan" source="keywords">Varun Dhawan</keyword>, Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor and Karisma Kapoor, Rajnikanth and family are are on the invitee list. The three-day-long event will be themed, according to 'Event Guide' sent to the invitees. Chartered flights have been arranged to ferry guests from Delhi and Mumbai to Jamnagar and back. Guests are expected to arrive by mid-day on March 1. Hollywood pop-icon Rihanna, along with Diljit Dosanjh and others, will enthrall the guests with their performances. Day 1 celebrations are called 'An Evening in Everland' where guests are expected to wear elegant cocktail attire. Day 2 will host 'A Walk on the Wildside' with 'jungle fever' being the suggested dress code. It is set to be held outdoors in the Ambanis' animal rescue centre in Jamnagar. The guests will then proceed to 'Mela Rouge' which will be a potpourri of desi activities and the guests will wear their favourite south Asian attires. For Day 3, two events - 'Tusker Trails' and 'Hashtakshar' are planned. The first event will be an outdoor affair where the guests will enjoy the natural beauty of Jamnagar and for the last and final event, they'll be dressed in 'heritage Indian Wear'. All the guests will be provided with personal laundry services, saree drapers and other custom assistance, the nine-page event guide said.

Billionaires to Bollywood: All invited to Anant Ambani's pre-wedding festivities

New Delhi, Dec 25 () Regional language social media company ShareChat on Wednesday said over 100 million pieces of Hindi user-generated content (UGC) have been created on its platform this year, accounting for over 22 per cent of such content.
Other top languages in which UGC was created on the platform - which claims to have over 60 million monthly active users - includes content in Tamil, Telegu, Punjabi and Malayalam.
"Hindi is the top language based on UGC creation on our platform this year. National and regional brands have also started getting attracted and are already driving campaigns on the platform in Hindi language as we are best placed to provide them the desired scale and engagement," ShareChat CBO Sunil Kamath said.
He added that there are an estimated six lakh creators working on Hindi content on the platform.
"Apart from content creation, there is also an extremely high engagement. We saw 1.98 billion WhatsApp shares of Hindi content, and over 100 million hours of short form Hindi videos were played on ShareChat in 2019," Kamath said.
He noted that maximum content posts in Hindi are coming from cities like Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Jabalpur, Patna and Lucknow.
Kamath pointed out that given this trend, brands are also using Hindi and other vernacular languages to connect and drive unique brand experiences amongst its target audience through micro influencers strategy.
"Brands are using our platform to connect and interact in native languages with users across the country. We are working with them to craft effective storytelling and drive deeper engagement and experiences that will be closer to the heart of their audiences," he added. SR KPM BAL
BAL

Users created over 100 mn pieces of Hindi content in 2019: ShareChat

New Delhi, Mar 12 () Regional language social media platform ShareChat has seen a 15 per cent increase in daily average users and rise in content shared on topics like news, health and devotion on its platform amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Bengaluru-based company, which has about 60 million monthly active users (MAUs), has also stepped up efforts to weed out misinformation around COVID-19 to ensure safety of users. "We have seen a phenomenal growth in both content creation and engagement during lockdown. New gainers for us are categories like news, health and devotion," ShareChat CBO Sunil Kamath told . While he did not disclose exact numbers, Kamath said ShareChat's daily average users have increased by 15 per cent and session log in duration has gone up by 20 per cent. "The user generated content (UGC) has also increased from an average 8 lakh posts a day in week 1 to about 9.5 lakh three weeks later, a 18.75 per cent rise," he said. More than 2 lakh posts were coronavirus-related, he added. Besides, video consumption has also increased by 15 per cent from approximately 23 billion video plays previously, he said. Categories like news are now seeing about 65,000 posts being created a day, while health and devotion are seeing 24,000 and 80,000 posts being generated daily on the platform, respectively. Kamath noted that fighting fake news is a focus area for ShareChat. He explained that ShareChat has multiple third party fact checkers reviewing content across 13 languages to ensure removal from trending feeds of any content that is found to be factually inaccurate, and debunking conspiracy theories, fake news and misinformation campaigns. The platform has also instituted algorithmic changes to ensure the trending feed on the platform does not display any content that has been marked by fact checkers to have content that is verifiably found to be untrue by third party fact checkers. "We have also ensured a trending tag is displayed at launch which would provide users with the latest official updates from MoHFW," he said. Besides, ShareChat has also launched a chatbot on the app, in partnership with All_IN_Call, for addressing user queries around COVID–19 with authentic information from various government and global health sources within the app. According to App Annie, Sharechat clocked 14 million daily average users between August 2019 and January 2020. SR RVK

ShareChat sees 15 pc increase in daily average users during lockdown

New Delhi, Dec 5 () Social media platform Sharechat on Thursday said content from its platform has been shared 14 billion times on mobile messaging application WhatsApp so far this year.
 The platform observed that 23 per cent users created entertainment-related content on its platform while engagement on romantic content was around 14 per cent.
 "450 million UGC (user generated content) posted/ created on ShareChat, in formats spanning images, videos, GIFs, etc, with over 580 million hours of video played on the platform which got more than 14 billion WhatsApp shares this year," the company said in a Sharechat 2019 Trendz report.
 The social media platform observed that users in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan engage with devotional content in the morning and turn to romantic content in the evening.
 "The last five years have been a great learning experience and we have grown from zero to 60 million monthly active users, mostly organic way as we truly understand the heart and pulse of every native language user and connect well through our platform," Sharechat Chief Business Officer Sunil Kamath said.
 The platform also saw surge in nationalism moments on the platform at the time of Pulwama attack, return of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and general elections.
 "Hindi led the user generated content creation with 22.5 per cent followed by Tamil with 19.4 per cent. Teleugu and Punjabi were at the third spot with more than 13 per cent share each," the report said.
 The social media platforms claims to over 60 million user which includes 21 million content creators on its platform. PRS HRS

Sharechat says its content shared 14 billion times on WhatsApp

<ul><li>The outbreak of coronavirus has affected our daily routines. </li><li>We wanted to find out the good, bad and ugly sides of working while under house arrest and talk about if it's even possible to balance work and personal life in a situation like this.</li><li>On World <keyword id="799405" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mental-Health-Day">Mental Health Day</keyword>, ad industry experts got candid and told us how as leaders they are trying to address <keyword id="32785" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="work-pressure">work pressure</keyword> and bringing about changes.</li></ul>Working from home has taken a toll on our mental health. Mounting uncertainty, work pressure and the physical stress of sitting in one position for hours, have led to changes in our lifestyle and sleep patterns, which has added to the stress. According to a study conducted by GOQii, among 10,000 Indians that aimed to understand how they have been coping with the new normal, 43% of them agreed that their stress levels have been on the rise and are likely to be clinically depressed. 26% of respondents were suffering from mild depression, 11% were feeling moderately depressed, and 6% were facing severe symptoms of depression. While glamourous on the outside, advertising is notoriously stressful and a hard job on the inside. The industry has always been infamous for normalising extreme working hours. With work from home, the stress levels, tough deadlines, demanding clients and high pressure have quadrupled. It is not really work from home. Work has become home now. It is normalised to the extent that copywriters often boast about bags under their eyes and for treating work like their life-partner. The advertising professional eventually either succumbs to this incessant toiling or gives up on their dream to settle for a 9 to 5 job. Last month, the advertising industry lost a young professional due to cardiac arrest, which was induced by work stress last month. We had done a story to find out from the young copywriters if agencies are still refusing to acknowledge that burnout is a real issue in the industry. They had told us that the problem still exists and it all boils down to the notion that you cannot say no to your client. So, on Mental Health Day, we decided to speak to industry experts to discuss what we can to normalise having a conversation about mental health at work, how to create a healthy workplace and address the examples of overworked and stressed employees. We organised a panel discussion with experts like Subhash Kamath, CEO of BBH and Publicis Worldwide India and Chairman of ASCI, Rita Verma, EVP and HR Head, DDB Mudra Group, Sunil Seth, HR Director, South Asia, Dentsu International, Disha Daswani, Creative Director, Schbang. It was moderated by Dr. Marcus Ranney, General Manager, Thrive Global India. The experts said it is important to acknowledge the work stress and make the employee feel welcome. With our panel discussion, we wanted to remind ourselves and our industry to move towards a culture where we can prioritize the importance of self-care, better manage stress, and enhance physical and mental-well-being for ourselves and our teams. Experts also highlighted how it is important to remind your employees that work doesn’t define them and one should not assess their value based on the number of tasks they have ticked off in a day. All this and much more in our conversations with experts below: <div type="twitter" handle="admediainsider" handlename="Advertising and Media Insider India" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1281482517443305472/8RPcjmow_normal.jpg" favoritecount="9" retweetcount="6" status="Ahead of #MentalHealthDay, @Thrive_india's @docmranney speaks to @BBHindia's @Subkam, @DDBMudra_Group's… https://t.co/4QkgwUTmlq" createdat="1602224987000" id="1314452986173681664"></div>

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ShareChat is growing its team from 250 to 400 as it moves to monetize its 60 million user base

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Sharechat says its content shared 14 billion times on WhatsApp

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