After being in survival mode for the past two years, ShareChat’s Google and Temasek-backed parent Mohalla Tech is shifting gears from high cash burn to focus on sustainable growth, the company’s Co-Founder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva told Moneycontrol in an interview.
From around the end of 2022, when the company was burning about $30 million each month, to now, ShareChat has had its share of challenges, including monetisation struggles, layoffs, and top level exits, including some of its Co-Founders who left for greener pastures.
“We have now become cash flow positive. So we're trying to steady the ship, get to sustainable revenue growth. That's a prerequisite for being a healthy company... We are looking to have an IPO in the next two years,” Sachdeva said.
“We've been in survival mode for the last two years, but are now getting back into the build mode,” he added.
Over the years, cheap money was fuelling growth at ShareChat, but the company has decided to become more frugal lately.
The social media unicorn earned Rs 718.1 crore in FY24, growing nearly 30 percent year-on-year, from Rs 552.7 crore in FY23, according to data from Tracxn.
Mohalla Tech also narrowed its losses 63 percent, from Rs 5,144.3 crore in FY23 to Rs 1,898.9 crore in FY24.
“At present, we're not running on VC funds anymore. We're running on our own revenues… which will double over the next three years,” Sachdeva said, and added that the company is not actively looking for a fundraise but will be open to one in case it can help tap into a larger opportunity.
In its last major fundraise in April 2024, Mohalla Tech secured $49 million in venture debt from existing investors, including EDBI, Lightspeed, Temasek, Harvourvest, Moore, and RIMCO. Per media reports, during this round, the startup’s valuation was slashed to around $1.5 billion from a peak of $5 billion in 2022. Thereafter, the company raised another $16 million in venture debt in August 2024, from the same investors.
In other rounds, ShareChat has roped in investors like India Quotient, Snap Inc, Twitter (now X), Elevation Capital, and Mirae-Naver Asia Growth Fund.
In all, the firm has raised around $1.2 billion in a mix of debt and equity, per Tracxn data.
Sachdeva called the last two years a journey from a “very high cash burn trajectory” to now “slowly chipping away costs while scaling revenue.”
“February 2025 was the first time in our 10-year history when we were cash-flow positive. All the efforts of the last two years have finally culminated in this. We're now switching gears and getting more growth focussed,” he explained. Mohalla Tech has two major brands under it, social media platform ShareChat and short-video app Moj.
Sharechat was started in 2015 by Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan. Singh and Ahsan quit the firm in October 2023 to start their robotics startup.
Monetisation and new formats
To achieve its revenue target, ShareChat is focussing on user retention, building new avenues for monetisation, backend technology, and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in content creation.
ShareChat and Moj both have north of 100 million monthly active users and have survived thus far, at a time when most Indian social media and short video apps such as Koo, Chingari, Mitron, etc, have either shut down or found it difficult to scale up and monetise.
These came into prominence after Chinese apps such as TikTok were banned in the country in 2020 amid geopolitical tension.
Among its long-term technology bets, Mohalla Tech will be enhancing its feed recommendation engine which is used for personalisation of content in both the products. Additionally, there will be focus on improving ad targeting, which has been feeding into the startup’s revenues.
“In the last two years we've been focussed on maintaining or slightly improving our quality while controlling costs. We are also making the ad targeting better. Live streaming has been a large part of our revenues,” Sachdeva said.
Sacheva said that longer format videos, live community conversations, and short-format content series and shows are gaining traction. Both ShareChat and Moj, which had 45-second and 15-second videos, respectively, are shifting to one-minute clips, which creates newer opportunities for ads and monetisation.
Layoffs, top level exits
In the last two years, the company has also had at least three to four rounds of layoffs to manage costs, while several top and mid-level leaders exited, including the Co-Founders. These two Co-Founders, along with Sachdeva, continue to hold a cumulative stake of 11.4 percent in the parent company.
At present, ShareChat’s headcount is north of 500 employees, significantly lesser than its workforce of around 2,800 a few years ago.
The latest round of layoffs earlier this year was to churn out 4 percent of the non-performing employees.
Sachdeva said there won’t be further mass layoffs to downsize the team, except for performance-based exits.
“I think our last layoff was in early Q1 of 2024. Since then, we've controlled our headcount. We've had performance-led exits, but those are in low single digits, about 4 percent. That will continue as it's healthy for an organisation to have performance-led exits… But other than that we're not expecting any layoffs going forward,” he added.
As for top-level hiring, the company recently made its Chief Financial Officer Manohar Charan a Co-Founder. He has been with the startup for the last five years. Former TikTok executive Nitin Jain was appointed as the CTO in December 2024.
“I think we have a pretty steady leadership team now. There was a time two years ago when there was a lot of flux. But that's sorted now,” Sachdeva added.
Also read: Inside Sharechat’s crisis: absent founders, flurry of management exits, spiralling losses
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