To fuel growth in the changed operating ecosystem, ShareChat is looking to raise $150-200 million as it plans on aggressive expansion because its Chinese counterparts and primary rivals TikTok and Helo applications have been banned by the government from operating in Indian markets.

Previously, ShareChat competed with ByteDance owned Helo application, merely after days, the ban was imposed on TikTok which is also owned by ByteDance. After that, the company launched a new short-video platform, ‘Moj’ as an alternative to it.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that development about Sundar Pichai-led Google comes just days after it had been reported that Satya Nadella-led Microsoft Inc had held discussions for potential investment into ShareChat.

Since the ban on TikTok’s operations in India, a stream of alternative short-video sharing social media platforms has witnessed exponential growth.

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On June 29, Moj made its debut on Play Store. It was 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 crores download mark in recent times.

It’s worth noting that the 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.

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 Chingari downloads figures are somewhat around 20 million.

The quick downloads of the apps mentioned above are not surprising because TikTok and other Chinese apps have left over 400 million users up for grabs for the desi clones.

After the ban on TikTok and other Chinese short video apps, 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.

To scale up Moj and strengthen its grip on the 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. 

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