Homegrown short video app Moj and Indic language social media platform ShareChat have raised $502 million in the latest round of funding. The investment has been led by Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global, along with participation from Snap Inc, Twitter and India Quotient amongst others. With the new round, the parent company Mohalla Tech’s valuation stands at a little over $2.1 billion, making it the latest to join the unicorn club.

The Bangalore-based company had roped in Twitter as an investor in 2019, but with this round, it has added Tiger Global and Snap Inc to its investment portfolio.

Ankush Sachdeva, CEO & Co-founder, ShareChat said “We are at an exciting inflection point in our journey, where we are going after a massive opportunity with the right team in place and the backing of long-term investors who have a deep conviction in our mission. With ShareChat & Moj, we are well-positioned to build the largest AI-powered content ecosystem in India.” He added, “With this infusion of capital we would continue to aggressively grow our user base, build a world-class org in India & US and further strengthen our creator community, AI-powered recommendation engine and platform health.”

As of today, the company claims, that Moj counts over 120 million monthly active users and ShareChat has over 160 million monthly active users.

Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global said, “As Internet penetration increases, ShareChat’s leading content creation platform is poised to expand dramatically by bridging into online purchases of goods and services. Additionally, Moj is well-positioned to seize the opportunity presented by the growth of short video in India. We are impressed with the team’s understanding of these rapidly evolving technologies and its ability to execute quickly, and we are excited to partner with them as they continue to build a great company.”

Founded in 2015, Mohalla Tech has now raised over $766 million across 6 fundraising rounds. The company’s short video app Moj was launched in July 2020, just two days after the Chinese app ban. In September 2020, ShareChat announced the completion of its Pre-Series E round of $40 million from a group of investors including Twitter, SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and India Quotient. Back then the company said that funding will be primarily utilised towards driving growth for Moj

Dev Khare, Partner, Lightspeed India said, "At Lightspeed, we are excited to have backed Ankush, Bhanu and Farid in every round from the Series A in 2016 onwards."

This is the fifth startup to enter the unicorn club just this week after investment platform Groww, health-tech startup PharmEasy, social e-commerce startup Meesho and credit card payment platform CRED made their funding announcements.

First Published:Apr 8, 2021 10:50 AM IST