Tag: sharechat

ShareChat and MX Media announce strategic merger of Moj and MX TakaTak

MX Media Co. Ltd, the parent company of MX TakaTak, and ShareChat, the parent company of Moj, today announced a strategic merger between Moj and MX TakaTak to create the largest short video platform for Indians, so both platforms will now be controlled by ShareChat.

MX Media Co. Ltd, the parent company of MX TakaTak, and ShareChat, the parent company of Moj, today announced a strategic merger between Moj and MX TakaTak to create the largest short video platform for Indians, so both platforms will now be controlled by ShareChat. The combined platform has 100 million creators, over 300 million active monthly users and almost 250 billion monthly video views. Once this transaction is completed, MX Media and its shareholders will become strategic shareholders of ShareChat.

Since its launch in July 2020, Moj has become India’s largest short video app with over 160 million MAUs and over 50 million creative communities in 15 Indian languages. The company is investing heavily in social and online commerce and has developed its AI/ML team, which now has over 100 strong people and spreads across the United States, Europe and India. MX TakaTak was released in July 2020 and reached 150 million MAU, in 10 languages. The platform’s deep access to content talent and understanding of the MX Media ecosystem has seen this high growth in a short time.

MX TakaTak will continue to function as a separate platform for the moment, but the two platforms’ creator base, content supply and recommendation algorithms of both platforms will be integrated. In the coming months, the experience of users and creators will converge to allow creators of both platforms to reach India’s largest audience pool. This will allow users to access unique features, including high-quality camera creation tools with Snap filters, live commerce, and a vast music library.

Commenting from Ankush Sachdeva CEO and co-founder of ShareChat & Moj

We at ShareChat are building India’s largest content ecosystem which has been on an unprecedented growth trajectory. MX TakaTak is a popular platform and this merger further consolidates our position in the short video ecosystem. With this development, we want to build the largest original content platform in Moj along with the largest community of users across India.

Comment from MX Media CEO Karan Bedi

I am excited to announce the strategic fusion of India’s two most popular social media platforms. As India’s largest digital entertainment platform, MX has always striven to build top-class world-class products, and TakaTak is no exception. This combined with Moj AI and execution capabilities make the combined company a world-class short video platform. MX has created two “Unicorns” within a business that release a significant value for our shareholders, and will now continue to double down on OTT, with significantly increased financial resources.



Local startups face competition from Bytedance’s TikTok and Helo

Bytedance made entry with apps like ‘TikTok’ (formerly Musically) and ‘Helo’ in India.

Bytedance made entry with apps like ‘TikTok’ (formerly Musically) and ‘Helo’ in India. Till early 2018, local startups like Clip App (video) and ShareChat (social networking) were blossoming.

TikTok started mushrooming quite well and to counter ShareChat, ByteDance cloned the former’s model and launched ‘Helo’ in early 2018.

TikTok started disintegrated the market share of Clip App. Struggling to retain acquired users and match marketing budgets of $75 billion valued Chinese group, Clip App finally struck an acquihire deal with ShareChat.



ShareChat has been witnessing intense competition from Helo which continues to burn anywhere between $15-18 million every month over the past six months. Backed with an aggressive approach, Helo has been gaining market share quickly while ShareChat userbase is witnessing its daily active users plateau over the last quarter of 2018.

Helo had 10 million downloads in the last month. On the other hand, ShareChat numbers of install stood at 7 million.

“Everyone in vernacular content space in India is raising capital. And you are competing with Bytedance, a continuous inflow of funds anyway becomes necessary”, said one of the startup’s founders on condition of anonymity.

ShareChat has been in talks with Tencent to rake in about $200 million with the help of the Chinese MNC and others. The deal if materialises would value ShareChat in the range of $600-700 million.

If Tencent takes on the responsibility to financially help ShareChat in its fight against ByteDance’s Helo, both might stay in the game for a long run. Still, in case there is no progress towards profitability, it is all big money down the drain.