START-UP CORNER: Share content in your own language
Share Chat allows users to share content in vernacular languages, reports ABHISHEK JEJANI
Priya Nair, 28, gets nostalgic as she shares her conversation about devotional content with her mother in their native language. She says ShareChat is the only app that provides her with the opportunity to talk to her close friends in Malayalam, her mother tongue. The start-up gives her a platform to share jokes and romantic messages in Malayalam with her husband.
The founding team’s understanding of their user and the ability to translate this understanding into product features at a lightning fast pace differentiates them from others in the space and they have acquired users with a minimal marketing spend and most of the growth has come virally, says Mayank Khanduja, principal (SAIF Partners), which has invested $4 million in the start-up.
The start-up claims to be the only app other than WhatsApp, which works flawlessly on any network (2G/3G). The app has been downloaded four million times with roughly two million monthly active users on the platform. Concept ShareChat is a social network platform, which allows users to create, discover and share content with each other like people do on Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram but in vernacular languages. Users can follow other users who are either content creators or friends on the platform for regular updates, much like most other social networks. The key differentiator for ShareChat, however, is the primary action of sharing.
It lets users post, add images, videos and audio clips. It has a ‘treasure’ section, where it lists content-based on categories such as education, devotion, news and information, etc.
The Bengaluru-based app is available in six languages — Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi. There is no English version. Tamil and Bengali are currently in beta stage and will be made available for all users shortly. Other social networking sites such as Facebook, which are multilingual till now, have only focused on translation, whereas ShareChat is inherently multilingual to the extent that instead of the typical “like” button, which we see on Facebook, ShareChat has options like “de taali” in Hindi, “lai bhaari” in Marathi and “adipoli” in Malayalam. Opportunity “There are approximately 375 million internet users in India, close to 50 per cent users fall in the category of ‘vernacular first’ users (people preferring mother tongue as their first language). The ‘vernacular first’ category is expected to contribute about 75 per cent of user base in India by 2020. ShareChat’s platform will serve the content needs of this large vernacular-first audience base,” says Mayank Khanduja.
ShareChat was started in October 2015 by Indian Institute of TechnologyKanpur alumnus Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva. It recently raised a funding of $4 million (~26.8 crore) in Series A round of funding, led by Lightspeed India Partners, and from existing investors, SAIF Partners and India Quotient. Revenue model The company is yet to figure out the sources of revenue. “We can start advertising with the distribution channel, but revenue is not our focus right now and we’re only planning to better the consumer delight and adding more and more users. Once we reach the desired user base, achieving a break-even would take a month or two,” says Farid Ahsan, chief executive officer and co-founder.
The start-up had previously raised $1.35 million in from SAIF Partners and India Quotient. It was also one of the several start-ups selected by Google for its accelerator programme this year and received $50,000 in equity-free seed funding. Challenges and road ahead The biggest threat for ShareChat would come from WhatsApp, which has nearly 100 per cent penetration in India, but has currently been focusing on users’ basic communication needs, says Khanduja. “Being a technology company, we have to regularly scale up and optimise the backend of our technology,” says ShareChat’s Ahsan.
Whenever a person shares a post via ShareChat on WhatsApp, a small attribution goes along with it, which has been a major driver of growth for the company. It also plans to tie up with vernacular dailies and regional media houses.
It aims to reach a user base of 25-30 million in the next 15-18 months and is only available on the android platform. It has a 37-member strong team and plans to take the number to 50 in the next 15 months. The company plans to use the fresh round of funds for going deep into the vernacular ecosystem. It aims to be a one-stop shop for all content needs.