ShareChat raises $16 Mn additional debt; lays off 5% employees

Mohalla Tech, the parent entity of the vernacular social media platform ShareChat and short video entertainment app Moj, has expanded its debt round to $65 million with $16 million latest infusion from Singapore-based EDBI.

In April, ShareChat had raised around $49 million in debt from existing investors including Temasek, Lightspeed, HarbourVest, Moore Strategic, Rimco and Alkeon. The company also saw its valuation nosedived to less than $2 billion from $5 billion during its last fundraise in June 2022.

The additional funds will be utilized for advertising company’s tech stack and expand the consumer transactions businesses with investment in newer monetization features, ShareChat said in a press release.

A Moneycontrol report also said that ShareChat has let go of 5% of its workforce as a part of its mid-year performance cycle. In 2023, the firm put several cost-cutting measures and sacked 700 employees across two phases. 

"...some employees are impacted on the basis of performance. This accounts for less than 5% of our workforce. We have a number of open positions and we continue looking for high quality talent across functions,” said a company spokesperson.

According to startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, ShareChat has raised around $1.8 billion from investors including Twitter (now X), Alkeon Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Tencent, among others.

ShareChat claims that the app is operationally profitable for the past several months, while the Moj app is close to operating break-even. Both apps cater to over 325 million users.

While the Ankush Sachdeva-led firm is yet to file its FY24 financials, it spent nearly Rs 4,000 crore in FY23 to earn Rs 533 crore in revenue. Overall, it recorded Rs 3,241 crore loss in FY23.

The surge in losses was primarily due to the write-off undertaken by the company for the acquisition of Moj’s competitor MxTakaTak. ShareChat spent nearly $700 million via cash and stock to acquire the Times Internet-backed company.