ShareChat’s short video sharing app, Moj has crossed 50 million downloads on Google Play Store. Moj also turned out to be the first homegrown app in the segment to reach the milestone within a month and a half.
Moj made its debut on Play Store on June 29, the same day when the Indian government had banned Chinese-origin 59 apps, including popular video-sharing app TikTok. With this, Moj (except Aarogya Setu) becomes the first privately-held app to cross five crore download mark in recent time.
It’s worth noting that InMobi-owned short video app Roposo has 70 million-plus downloads, but the company has been there on Play Store for more than a year. Other apps in the segment include MX TakaTak, Mitron, Trell, DailyHunt’s Josh and Chingari among many others.
While TakaTak has been downloaded over 33 million times, Mitron has close to 23 million downloads. At present, Josh has 28 million downloads whereas Trell and Chinagri downloads figures are north of 20 million.
The quick downloads of the apps mentioned above are not surprising because TikTok and other Chinese app have left over 400 million users up for grab for the desi clones.
ShareChat, MX TakaTak and Josh didn’t find much trouble in driving downloads as their core products were used by people who have been looking for alternatives after the ban on TikTok and other Chinese short videos apps.
To scale up Moj and strengthening its grip on vernacular social networking segment, ShareChat recently raised $35-40 million in a financing round from existing investors. Last month, Entrackr had exclusively reported the internal round.
ShareChat has also assigned Morgan Stanley as its banker as it looks to raise a larger amount of money from new investors. Sequoia and Microsoft are reportedly in preliminary conversations to invest in the Bengaluru-based company.
Meanwhile, Microsft is also in talks with Bytedance to acquire TikTok in the US, Australia, New Zealand and India. In case, the US-based technology major takes over TikTok in India; then desi clones have almost no chance to stand against TikTok.
Even if TikTok doesn’t make a comeback in India, monetisation will be a big challenge for ShareChat and others in the short video segment. The five-year-old Shunwei-backed firm had recorded no operational revenue in FY19 with a massive expense of Rs 440 crore. ShareChat is yet to disclose the financial performance of FY20, but it’s unlikely to show any drastic improvement.
