ShareChat: Building a desi social network for next billion smartphone users

ShareChat claims itself to be the country's first vernacular language social platform targeting Tier-II and Tier-III cities

India’s start-up world is full of a few successes and many failures. The journey of Bengaluru-based vernacular language social networking start-up ShareChat summarizes all of it.

IIT graduates Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva, all in their 20s, always wanted to be a part of the start-up ecosystem, and after 14 failed attempts in several sectors, including building a real estate portal, a crowdsourcing platform, and a civic data platform, the trio came up with ShareChat in 2015.

“We are building a desi social network for the next billion smartphone users,” says Ahsan. “That is where the market opportunity