Mohalla Tech’s valuation crosses $3.7 billion after it raises $266 million

Mohalla Tech, the parent company behind short-video platform Moj and regional social network ShareChat, has raised $266 million as part of its Series G round. At a valuation of $ 3.7 billion, the investment has been led by Alkeon Capital with participation from new and existing investors including Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV), Harbourvest and India Quotient. This is the third round of funding for the startup in 2021. In July this year, the firm’s valuation was $2.9 billion after it raised $145 million as an extension of its Series F.

The latest round of funding will help build deep capabilities on priority areas such as social and live commerce, growing its artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) team which is now over a 100 people strong and spread across the US, Europe and India. With these highly experienced hires, Mohalla Tech has today one of India’s largest AI/ML teams working on building a cutting edge recommendation engine.

“Moj and ShareChat have been growing at an explosive pace. Both our products have been leading the market with the highest monthly active user base, a very active creator set and amazing new partnerships to delight our community,” said Ankush Sachdeva, CEO and co-founder, Moj and ShareChat. “This fresh funding will further strengthen our position and help us deliver immersive social experiences to our community.”

Since January 2021, the company has grown to over 2000 employees and added several new features as it focuses on building its products to be the leader in the Indian short video and social media space. With social and live commerce initiatives, the company hopes to reach a target of $100 million annualized creator earnings by the end of 2023.

Founded in 2015, Mohalla Tech has now raised over $1.177 billion across eight fundraising rounds with $913 million raised this year itself. This has helped both Moj and ShareChat to continue their growth journey, differentiate and deliver immersive social media experiences. Moj said it is India’s number one short video app with the highest monthly active users base, with an average user time spent of 34 minutes every day, scoring over 4.5 billion views daily.

ShareChat, the Indic language social media platform, is positioned uniquely with an average user time spent of 31 minutes daily. Moj and ShareChat together, with a 340 million-strong user community, envision building a cohesive AI-powered content ecosystem to address India’s growing digital needs.

Deepak Ravichandran, General Partner at Alkeon Capital said by leveraging multiple apps, a best-in-class AI recommendation engine, and local language content, ShareChat is building the leading social media platform in India. “In one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic internet markets in the world – with an estimated 600 million (mostly mobile) internet users – ShareChat is already entrenched as the largest and most engaging social and digital media platform,” said Ravichandran.

“We are excited to partner with and support ShareChat’s best-in-class management team as they pursue their robust product roadmap and build on their ambitious vision.”

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