ShareChat building diversified monetisation avenues beyond advertising

ShareChat is building diversified monetisation avenues beyond advertising in areas like virtual gifting and video commerce. Mohalla Tech, its parent company, also operates India's largest short video platforms Moj and TakaTak, besides the ShareChat app, which has more than 400 million users. As it goes to 1 billion-level, we will see that everyone is satisfied with their content need or utility need. That part of India is helping us grow in the next decade. India is very heterogeneous. The next India growth story has to have a regional focus. Ajit Varghese, Chief Commercial Officer, ShareChat said that it was already happening with translations or using AI Artificial Intel to capture a larger audience.

In June, ShareChat raised $255 million from Google, Times Group and Temasek and reached $5 billion in valuation. Moj, which competes with a number of players like Josh and Tiki in the short video format space, has grown to become a popular short video app with over three times daily active users and two times daily time spent per user compared to its nearest domestic rival, according to the company.

According to reports, TikTok's parent company ByteDance is planning a comeback into the country. More players coming into a sector shows that there is enough room for players right now. The consumer interest rate is on the rise and the focus is on product and user experience as a result of competition. There is a competition on Instagram, regardless of whether TikTok comes or not. Competition in a way improves you. Our focus is on making sure that the users who have given us the confidence, how do we make sure that their experience, retention and affinity to our apps continue to grow? Varghese says so.

Competition will keep putting pressure, but our job will be to get that experience and retention going right, he adds.

A lot of hyperlocal language content is getting prominence with a lot of 'Bharat' access to the internet, according to ShareChat. That is actually fulfilling a need for people, and not just the popular content, but how can I get more fresh content, where I can both satisfy my hunger for content, and keep it very here and now in terms of what is relevant, he said.

After TikTok left, Varghese said that we have been leading from the front in making sure that both at a content level and at a language level, at a hyperlocal level, we are able to build an ecosystem across ShareChat and Moj, by bringing short video form content and engagement into prominence.