Lightspeed controls over 19% stake in ShareChat; founders’ stake worth $310 Mn

Over the years, Lightspeed has doubled down on its stake in select portfolio companies by infusing large amounts round after round. This is evident in its shareholding in Udaan and Magicpin where it owns 40% and 42.27% respectively.

It also owns the largest stake in desi social networking cum short entertainment platform ShareChat. Following the company’s $502 million mega-round, Lightspeed owns a 19.23% stake in the newly minted unicorn, regulatory filings analysed by Fintrackr shows.

The VC firm has invested $90 million in the recently announced round.

Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners) and Twitter own 12.41% and 10.83% stake in the company respectively. It’s worth noting that ShareChat has also allotted preference shares to Twitter in lieu of a $30 million loan it took in 2020.

China’s Shunwei Capital owns more than 8% of ShareChat whereas Xiaomi has a 6.84% stake. Tiger Global, which has had a huge part to play in turning several companies into unicorns this year, including ShareChat, commands a 3.67% stake in the company. 

Meanwhile, the three co-founders of the company—Farid Ahsan, Ankush Sachdeva and Bhanu Pratap Singh—each own a 6.16% stake in the company they co-founded six years ago. Their collective stake has been diluted from 22.05% to 18.48% in this financing round and it's worth an estimated $310 million. 

ShareChat had joined the unicorn league this month along with five other companies — CRED, Gupshup, PharmEasy, Groww and Meesho. Apart from Tiger Global’s participation, it didn’t disclose any other details. However, Entrackr has been decoding it through regulatory filings. 

Last week, we exclusively reported about Tencent’s participation in ShareChat’s Series E round with a hefty $225 million convertible debt.

According to separate regulatory filings, ShareChat has received fresh funds across two new rounds - Series F and F2.

In the Series F round, the company has raised anywhere between Rs 530 to Rs 592 crore from six investors. Lightspeed participated in both rounds by investing Rs 656-732.5 crore or around $88-98 million whereas Snap Inc, Gifted Jade Limited and  IQ opportunities Fund collectively invested Rs 183 crore to Rs 205 crore or $25-27 million.

Moving over to the Series F2 round, we see a sharp rise in price per share of around 46% where Tiger Global and Lightspeed collectively poured in Rs 728 crore- Rs 809 crore or $98-109 million. Tiger led the F2 round with Rs 414-462.5 crore or $56-62 million joined by  LightSpeed with an infusion of around Rs 311 crore to Rs 347.05 crore at the higher valuation. 

According to Fintrackr’s estimates, ShareChat has been valued anywhere between $1.95 billion to $2.18 billion after the conclusion of the F2 round. 

As of now, ShareChat has mopped up $414 million in the Series F round including $225 million debt. The remaining $88 million (out of the announced $502 million) is likely to be received by the company in the coming weeks.