Human attention is now the gold of the digital era—everyone’s digging for it. Catch it, and you’ve struck fortune; lose it, and it’s gone in a blink. This short attention span can be attributed to scrolling through short-form videos, typically between 30 seconds to a minute. The trend has fueled the rise of short-form video content, but the market remains dominated by only a few players. Experts suggest that building a tech platform in this space requires significant investment, a skilled team, deep audience insights, and sustained funding.
To be sure, it was the ban on Chinese short-form video content platform TikTok, that led to the rise of home-grown as well as a few international firm-backed platforms. For instance, YouTube Shorts from the house of Google and Instagram Reel by Meta. Besides, ShareChat, a social network founded in 2015, and Moj, a short-form video platform launched in 2020, among many others established a foothold by focusing on local and vernacular content. To survive, grow, and compete with giants like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, the company pursued mergers, acquisitions, and funding while implementing various monetisation strategies for creators to carve out a unique space in the market.
ShareChat and Moj’s parent company Mohalla Tech’s revenue from operations rose 59.3% to Rs 552.73 crore in FY23 from Rs 346.93 crore in FY22, as per filings accessed by Tofler. Its net losses widened 72.17% to Rs 5,144.773 crore in FY23 from Rs 2,988.63 crore in FY22.
As per several media reports, ShareChat acquired MX TakaTak to bolster Moj’s position in the short video space, but the acquisition resulted in a Rs 816 crore write-off due to declining engagement, user growth, and ad revenues on the platform. In 2023, Moj saw a 25% drop in monthly active users, a 30% decrease in monthly downloads, and a 20% decline in daily engagement. High user acquisition costs, alongside the exit of many micro-influencers, strained ShareChat’s cash flow, contributing to an FY23 loss of Rs 4,064 crore on revenue of Rs 540 crore. Despite merging user bases, Moj has struggled to compete with dominant players like Instagram and YouTube in India’s short-form video market after TikTok’s exit.
In a conversation with BrandWagon Online, Gaurav Jain, chief business officer, ShareChat, talks about the company’s surviving strategies, creator monetisation, and marketing plans among others. (Edited Excerpts)
Given the losses in FY23, how was FY24 for you and what are the expectations for FY25?
Total revenue increased 32% in FY24 when compared with last fiscal while net loss reduced to one-third compared to FY23. Subsequently, ShareChat app became profitable in September 2024 on a standalone basis. We recorded strong growth in top-line revenue in FY23. There’s been solid demand for both our advertising and live business segments. Our live business, in particular, is unique for us. In this model, users provide some form of gratification to their favourite creators or influencers, and we facilitate that interaction.
The current financial year is shaping up to be even better, partly due to decisions we made three to six months ago that are now yielding results. We were very conscious of managing our costs and burn rate, and we’ve been able to creatively and smartly cut down on expenses. The team has worked hard to onboard new advertisers and expand wallet share with existing ones, especially during the festive season, and it’s paying off.
Your platform provides a space for brand visibility and advertising for others, but how do you market your brand? What is your strategy for growing your business and increasing visibility?
We approach marketing from a couple of angles. For our B2C marketing—how we make our brand known to end consumers who use the platform—we’ve significantly scaled down our spending. About two years ago, we made a strategic shift, recognising that ShareChat and Moj are well-known names in India’s social media industry. We decided that spending money on user acquisition was no longer necessary, as user growth could come from word of mouth or organic downloads. As a result, we cut down our digital advertising budget for new user acquisition by over 90%. Despite this reduction, our daily active users and monthly active users have held steady, and time spent on the platform has increased, even with higher ad loads. This is where our recommendation engine plays a crucial role; by suggesting the next best video, we’re able to retain users on our platform.
On the B2B marketing side, about a year ago, we realised the need to better communicate our value to advertisers. We’ve scaled up efforts to highlight what ShareChat and Moj offer and our unique proposition for chief marketing officers and others in the industry. For instance, we hosted our first flagship event, ‘Short Form, Big Impact,’ where leaders from client and agency sectors discussed the transformative role of short-form video. We’ve also formed partnerships with various industry events. This focus on B2B marketing will continue, while B2C marketing remains minimal, as we believe the platform can organically attract users. However, with profitability achieved, we now have the flexibility to reinvest some of our earnings into B2C marketing if needed.
What is your average active monthly user and who is your TG (target group)?
Our average monthly active users across ShareChat and Moj are over 300 million, or about 30 crore users. To give some background, ShareChat was launched in 2015, so it’s been nine years. Its user base is primarily from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, with an age demographic between 25 and 44 years old. Moj, launched in 2020, is a younger, more urban app. Its primary users are from tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with an age group of 18 to 34 years old.
Can you explain how monetisation works for creators on your platform, especially in comparison to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, which offer features like monetisation tools and shopping tags?
From the beginning, ShareChat has positioned itself as a content marketplace. On one side, we have creators providing content, and on the other, users consuming it, with our recommendation engine matching relevant content to users. This focus has been on both users and creators, ensuring that creators have a reason to stay on our platform.
To support this, we’ve developed long-running programs to make ShareChat not only the primary platform for creators but also a source of sustainable livelihood. In our advertising collaborations with brands, we share revenue with our creators, creating consistent income models. These opportunities range from influencer activation campaigns and hashtag challenges to live shopping. When our team engages with major advertisers in India, this is a key aspect of our pitch, showing how creators can earn on our platform.
What are your plans for this festive season regarding audience engagement, increased advertising, and boosting sales?
This is a great time for us. It’s one of the busiest periods across our teams. During this time, our daily active users and time spent on the platform increased, along with advertisers spending both time and money with our sales teams. So, it’s busy across the product and sales teams, but life is good.
It’s also a special period because we recently achieved contribution margin level profitability across the company. This is a big milestone, especially for a company of our size and scale. Running a short-form video company is an expensive endeavour, with large cloud bills and substantial monetisation efforts for our influencers and creators. So, this achievement, nine years after our founding, is very humbling for us. From here, it’s onward and upward.
Can you share your five-year growth plans, especially in the fast-evolving digital space, and explain how you’re planning to use generative AI in these plans?
Our growth plans are very ambitious, especially now that we have proven many sceptics wrong regarding the profitability of a regional social media platform. Our core values will continue to drive our growth.
Firstly, we emphasise deep localisation. We are deeply rooted in India’s linguistic and cultural landscape, offering content in over 15 languages. This ensures that our platform remains relevant, relatable, and trusted by users across the country. This commitment will help us reach a billion Indian users in the future.
Secondly, we focus on innovation. Our early work in AI and our advanced machine-learning tools are at the core of everything we do. We constantly push the boundaries in content personalisation, providing users with hyper-relevant feeds while supporting brands of all sizes to reach their audiences more efficiently.
Thirdly, we prioritise empowering creators. The number of creators on social media is only going to grow significantly in the coming years. We must continually innovate to make it easy for creators to produce content on our platform and ensure it’s lucrative for them. We need to scale tools that enable brands to seamlessly integrate with creators, which is essential for scaling our business.
AI is another critical component of our strategy. While the buzz around AI is relatively recent, we’ve been incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence into our operations for at least four years. We have an AI team based in the UK, focused on everything from feed recommendations to ad placements. We plan to invest in such teams and technologies because they lead to significant gains.
Generative AI, in particular, will be a powerful tool for creators. I believe that generative AI will enhance, not replace, creators. With cutting-edge generative AI tools, a creator who typically takes eight hours to produce content could potentially do it in just half an hour, significantly increasing their productivity. This is an area where we are continually investing.
When discussing the platform, it essentially operates as a tech platform. There are giants in this industry, like Meta, that continuously develop new technologies, features, and functionalities. How do you keep up with these competitors?
Yes, tech is fiercely competitive. Every day, the landscape shifts a little faster. At ShareChat, we believe that if you’re feeling comfortable, you’re in the wrong place – that’s how rapid the pace of change is in this industry.
Our biggest advantage is our deep understanding of the Indian market. While global giants like Meta and YouTube are present here, I don’t think they’re truly building for India. Their main focus remains on markets where revenue per user is higher, mostly in Western countries. So, while their product rollouts are global, they may not always capture the unique needs of an Indian consumer, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. This is where we have a clear edge.
We’re proud to be a vernacular platform. When you download ShareChat, we ask you to choose a language – and English isn’t even an option. This approach has led to a large part of our user base coming from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. If you’re looking for Kannada content from a local influencer or an educational video in Malayalam, ShareChat is often the only platform offering that content.
The reason ShareChat exists, even with these global giants around, is because we have a strong product-market fit. We’re building exclusively for India, whereas global platforms also build for India but aren’t as focused on the local nuances. Three or four years ago, there were about ten short-form video apps here, many of which no longer exist. We’ve stayed relevant because we understand both our technology and our users well, and that’s a strength that won’t go out of style, regardless of how technology evolves.
Could you give us an overview of the top five creators on ShareChat and Moj? This would help to understand the type of audience on your platforms.
The top creators on ShareChat include Sweety with 1.9 million followers, followed by Suraj and Sam Guru, each with 1.6 million followers. Jalauddin Malik has 1.4 million followers, while Sajan Sharma rounds out the top five with 1.2 million followers. On Moj, the leading creators are Khwahish Gal and Bindu Gowda, each with 7.4 million followers, followed by Jesurathi with 7 million. Padhupadmavathi6 has 6.3 million followers, and Anjali Jain has 6 million, showcasing the diverse linguistic reach and appeal across Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu audiences.
For example, we have a large group of creators producing devotional content, another dedicated to dance and music videos, and a significant number focused on home cooking and ‘mom’ influencer content. Additionally, there’s a category of influencers who review tech products and do unboxing videos. Overall, we have a wide variety of creators across different categories.
What are the company’s expansion plans, and do you offer any ad-free subscription plans like other social network apps? Additionally, what opportunities remain untapped in the short-form video market shortly to capture?
For the foreseeable future, we remain focused on the Indian audience and market, given the immense growth potential. Currently, there are around 700-800 million smartphone users in India, and we reach about 300 million of them. Over the next five years, smartphone penetration could reach a billion people, offering significant room for expansion and monetisation tailored for India.
Regarding a premium version, we already offer ‘Moj Plus,’ a subscription-based service providing additional features for Rs 29 or Rs 59. This is a growing revenue stream, hence we are adding value for users seeking an enhanced experience.
As for trends in short-form video content, it’s not just the future; it’s the present. With diminishing attention spans, content that once took 15-20 minutes to convey can now be shared effectively in under a minute. Short-form video consumption is significant—about 80-85% of Indians spend considerable time on it. However, marketers have been slower to adapt. While users are deeply engaged with short-form content, many brands continue using longer formats better suited to older demographics. For younger millennials, Gen-Z, and soon Gen Alpha, short-form videos will become essential for brand storytelling, unlocking new revenue opportunities as marketers catch up to consumer behaviour.