Indian language social network ShareChat raises Rs 9 cr from SAIF Partners, India Quotient

ShareChat, a social network that allows users to chat with each other in local languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Telugu, has raised $1.35 million (Rs 9 crore) from investors including SAIF Partners and India Quotient.

India Quotient had earlier provided seed funding of $100,000 (Rs 65 lakhs) in February 2016 in ShareChat, which was among the six Indian startups shortlisted by Google for its launch pad accelerator programme.

ShareChat, which began as a company that shared local language content on Whatsapp, plans to offer similar service on its platform in Punjabi, Oriya and Tamil by August. It has over one million users who have downloaded its app and nearly half of them are active users of its platform. The firm says its user base is growing at 10 per cent every week.

India's local language content consumption on the internet is increasing phenomenally, mirroring the growth in vernacular media. Increasing internet access on smartphones is allowing users in smaller towns across India consume local content, prompting firms such as ShareChat customise their product for these audience.

"It is encouraging for us to see how our users have been responding and creating a really diverse variety in vernacular content on ShareChat. With the latest fund raise, we plan to strengthen our technology to serve the increasing traffic on ShareChat and expand into more languages and content types," said Farid Ahsan, CEO, ShareChat, in a statement.

Ahsan and his friends from IIT Kanpur, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva launched this service in late 2014.