Sharechat Founders' Automation Startup General Autonomy Raises $3 Mn in Seed Funding

Industrial automation and robotics company, General Autonomy, which is co-founded by the founders of ShareChat, has successfully raised $3 million in funding from investors including Elevation Capital and India Quotient, along with participation of notable angel investors such as Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Ramakant Sharma, and Ankush Sachdeva.

Founded this year, by Farhid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh, General Autonomy aims to pioneer industrial robotics infused with artificial intelligence (AI).

The launch as well as fundraise announcement was made by Ahsan on X (formerly Twitter), expressing gratitude for the support from investors like @IndiaQuotient and @ElevCap, as well as mentors @KhandujaM and @AnandLunia

Farhid and Bhanu have joined the likes of founders of several growth stage startups wherein co-founders or executives with leadership roles left the company and managed to raise capital for their new startup. The two founders left Sharechat earlier this year.

World Blood Donor Day: ShareChat Launches #PledgeToDonatecampaign to Spread Awareness on Blood Donation

The campaign has been designed to help the nation overcome its blood shortage problem

ShareChat, the Indian social media platform, today announces the launch of #PledgeToDonate campaign to spread awareness around blood donation. The campaign also aims to encourage its employees and 60 million monthly active users to pledge and engage with blood donation initiatives and address India’s blood shortage problem.

According to a research conducted by medical journal The Lancent, India has the world's largest shortage of blood, with all states together battling a huge shortfall of 41 million units and demand outstripping supply by over 400%.The 4 day campaign starting 11th June 2020 would focus on demonstrating its users their sense of belonging and responsibility towards the nation by donating blood. It would also invite users to share positivity on the platform around blood donation with a selfie campaign.

Commenting on the initiative, Mr Farid Ahsan, COO, ShareChat said “We, being an Indian platform designed for Indian audiences, it's our moral responsibility to stand for our country.With #PledgeToDonate campaign, we aim to inspire the thought of “belonging” for the nation among our users. We hope the campaign would motivate millions of Indians to come forward and contribute to the nation by taking a pledge to donate blood. We would also educate people on various safety measures, which is of utmost importance in today’s time."

“We believe this would offer immense support to our medical infrastructure, especially during the pandemic situation. We are confident that this campaign would turn out to be a success and help the nation to take the leap towards the future,” he added.

ShareChat has activated the Webcard on the platform with a ‘Pledge’ button, asking users to pledge by clicking the button. Users are expected to join the follow up campaign #IHavePledged, starting June 13th, with selfies. ShareChat will also spread awareness among its users with tips, suggestions, advisories and also, myth-busting facts. The campaign will be activated across 15 Indian languages on ShareChat.

ShareChat is India’s largest Indic language social media platform that allows users to share their opinions, record their lives and make new friends - all within the comfort of their native language. Spearheading India's internet revolution, ShareChat is changing the way in which the next billion users will interact on the internet. For more information, download ShareChat app from  Play Storeor visit  https://we.sharechat.com

ShareChat to Promote 'Aarogya Setu' App with Ad Credits of Rs 5 Cr

Indigenous social media platform ShareChat will promote adoption of the government's coronavirus patient tracking app Aarogya Setu with ad credits of around Rs 5 crore, the company said on Saturday.

The company claims to have over 6 crore active users on it platform.

"ShareChat, Indian social media platform, announced Saturday the setting aside of Rs 50 million in ad-credits on its platform for an extensive outreach campaign of the Aarogya Setu app," ShareChat said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged people to download the 'Aarogya Setu' mobile application, saying it is an important step in the country's fight against COVID-19.

The IT Ministry on April 2 launched the app to help people assess themselves the risk of catching coronavirus infection and alert authorities if they have come in close contact with a person infected with the deadly virus.

According to a ministry official, the app will detect only fresh cases and will send out alerts to only those who have been nearby the infected person. PTI PRS

Twitter, TrustBridge Led $100 Mn Funding in India's ShareChat, A Non-English Social Media Platform

Mumbai, Aug 16 (PTI) Regional social media platform ShareChat on Friday said it has raised USD 100 million in its series D funding with participation from microblogging site Twitter and private equity firm TrustBridge Partners.

Existing investors including Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital also participated in the funding round.

To date, ShareChat has raised a total of USD 224 million, it said in a statement.

"This new round of funding will help ShareChat strengthen the technology infrastructure for its platform as the company looks to scale its business. Additionally, ShareChat will acquire talent to help propel the exchange of ideas among its strategic partners," it said.

To accelerate the internet ecosystem in India, the company will also be introducing more features to make the experience seamless across devices, it added.

"This is a very exciting time for us at ShareChat as we see our platform growing rapidly. With this new round of funding, we are positioned to take the next leap in our growth story. As we scale up, our focus remains to help the ShareChat community better express themselves in the comfort
of their native language," ShareChat CEO Ankush Sachdeva said.

Commenting on the investment, Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari said, "Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges."

This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company's management team access to Twitter's executives as thought partners, he said. PTI DS AP

Here're Top 10 Innovative Indian Companies by Fast Company

Last week, Fast Company, a monthly American business magazine published its list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2019. JioSaavn along with other Indian companies such as Dream 11, Chai Point, Ola have made it to the list.

The list honours the businesses making the most profound impact on both industry and culture, showcasing a variety of ways to thrive in today’s volatile world. Half of the companies on this year’s MIC 50 list are appearing for the first time.

#1 Jio Saavn

Jio Saavn is a music streaming app formed post merger of Jio Music and Saavn and offers more than 40 million tracks in 15 regional languages for 38 million monthly active users, has been ranked 1st in the list of top 10 Indian firms in Most Innovative Company on a country basis.

#2 OYO

Gurgaon-headquartered budget accommodation firm OYO, which recently got a Unicorn stats, has got the 2nd position in the list. Fast Company chose OYO for its coveted place for expanding its hotel options to appeal to business travellers. Oyo, which resembles US-based Airbnb, is a network of properties that include free Wi-Fi, free breakfast, white linens, and other hotel features for a fraction of the cost of a normal hotel.

#3 Saathi

Amedabad-based Saathi Eco Innovations  [Feature Story] makes biodegradable sanitary napkins for rural women in India and has coveted the 3rd position for the most innovative companies from India.

Last year, in Cleantech Open Global Forum held in Los Angeles Saathi was announced winner for developing a technology to make fully biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads made from waste banana tree fibre.

#4 RupeeCoin

Hyderabad-based RupeeCoin, the first entry in the list has secured the 4th position. It is a blockchain solution startup which allows people without a bank account or a credit card to engage in the digital economy.

#5 OLA

Bangalore-based cab-hailing firm Ola, which recently got massive $900 million investment from Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, grabbed the 5th rank. It has expanded to a network of more than 1 million vehicles--cabs and autorickshaws--across 169 cities.

#6 Chakr Innovation

Delhi-based Chakr Innovation has secured the 6th position. The innovative startup has developed the world’s first retro-fit emission control device for diesel generators. It uses technology to reduce emissions from diesel generators and bring down air pollution levels.

#7 ShareChat

Bangalore-based ShareChat is a social networking and regional content platform for the fast growing Internet users in India. With ShareChat one can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images from India in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam.

#8 Swiggy

The food delivery company that recently raised $1 billion infunding has got 8th position for excellent food delivery service.

#9 Chai Point

A Harvard alumnus founded company, ChaiPoint made the entry for the first time and received the 9th position. It is India’s largest organized Chai retailer and caters to corporations with a cloud-based beverage service called BoxC, an IoT-enabled automatic tea dispenser.

#10 Dream11

Mumbai-based Dream11 made its entry for the first time and got the 10th rank. It offers Indian sports fans a platform to showcase their sports knowledge. Fans can create their own team of real-life players from upcoming matches, score points based on their on-field performance and compete with other fans.

Recently, International Council of Cricket (ICC) has signed a deal with Dream11, India's biggest sports gaming platform, to make it its "Official Fantasy Game Partner" till 2023.

Top Featured Image by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash.com

Xiaomi May Invest $15 Mn In Bangalore-based Social Networking Startup ShareChat

China-based smartphone and consumer electronics manufacturer Xiaomi and its venture capital firm, Shunwei Capital, are reportedly considering investing a whopping $15 million in funds in a Bengaluru-based social networking and regional content platform called ShareChat.

Started in the year 2015 by three IIT Kanpur alumni ‑ Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva, ShareChat in simple words is a social media platform in local Indian languages. With ShareChat, one can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images from India in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam.

As of now, the platform only caters to 10 regional languages. The startup plans on raising funding somewhere between $65 to $70 million dollars so that they can add more regional languages and cater to more diverse people all across the country. It is interesting to note that ShareChat doesn’t have English as a language of choice on its platform.

So, are social media platforms in vernacular languages really a need in the country? Well, various research work suggest it is.

According to research firms, currently, there are 350 million smartphone users in the country, of which an odd 100-120 million users are fluent with English. The others would prefer their vernacular language over English as a preferred mode of communication. This is the gap that ShareChat is hoping to explore and fill.

Furthermore, research company Ernst and Young in a report highlighting the future of digital content consumption in India had shared that the 45 percent of online users in India consume regional language content. The report also claimed that with low data plans, low-cost smartphones and rural development on the roll, one can expect this number to increase exponentially in the near future. This explains the growing investor interest in ShareChat.

Sharing his vision about ShareChat, co-founder Farid Ahsan said, “This is a young and aspirational set of population which is coming on the internet now, on the back of cheap smartphones and easy availability of mobile data. They are very different from people in the big cities who have been using emails and social media for almost a decade. We want to cater to this fast-growing group of users.”

Reportedly, Xiaomi and ShareChat have already inked the big deal, but haven’t closed it yet officially. The app, which claims to have 1.3 million daily active users and 4.2 million monthly active users, can be easily downloaded from Google Play Store. It is said to have been downloaded 10 million times already.

This isn’t the first time that Xiaomi is considering pumping money in platforms catering to regional Indian content users in the country. Previously, the Chinese major had led a $25 million investment into digital media entertainment company Hungama that reportedly has over 8000 movies in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Punjabi and six other Indian vernacular languages on its platform.

This development was first reported in the Times of India.

[Image: udemy]

Indian Language Social Platform ShareChat Raises $4M in Series A Round

ShareChat, the Indian language social platform, has closed a $4 million Series A round of funding, led by Lightspeed India Partners, and from existing investors, SAIF Partners and India Quotient. The funding round also saw participation from Venture Highway (through VH Capital). Sharechat is building the largest social content network in India with a focus on small town users and vernacular content.ShareChat is the only platform available to a large audience coming to the internet for the first time, in India.

“Our core focus is to become the most essential non-chat social app for a first-time internet user, whether it is through local language content or through infotainment services which are relevant to them.They are hunting for things to do that are utilitarian (payments, commerce, etc.) – there’s plenty of choice here from Flipkart to Ola to Justdial to PayTM. They are also hunting for ways to kill time (TV, games, books, magazines, news, music, social media, ...) Most of what is in this "kill time" category is the traditional entertainment & media industry rejigging their content for mobile consumption and distributing this one-way through aggregators or directly. Examples would be Saavn or Hotstar or InShorts or Youtube. Almost no one has created or exposed new content for the average Indian common man or woman. This is what Sharechat is doing” says Farid Ahsan, Co-founder & CEO, ShareChat.

As the name suggests, ShareChat allows users to create, discover and share content with each other much like people do on Tumblr and Instagram. Users can follow other users who are either a content creator or a friend on the platform for regular updates, much-like most other social networks. The key differentiator for ShareChat, however,is the primary action of sharing.

“Our audience is ever hungry for both consuming localised content and expressing their creativity and opinions to the right audience, something that was not very easy for them until now, even with existing social networks. We believe that the Indian user is very typical in his/her needs and this gives a local player a closeness to user problems when compared with global social networking giants like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Snapchat. A lot of our effort goes into understanding the audience and their needs through experiments. It is a lot like returning to an earlier time of internet usage, pretty close to how we were when we came to the internet for the first time in the early 2000s.” says Ankush Sachdeva, Co-founder and CPO, who has just returned from a survey trip to Alwar villages in Rajasthan.

Dev Khare, from Lightspeed India Partners, says, “ShareChat is poised to be a big problem solver for the largely-ignored mass market of India. The audience definitely needs a product which is relevant to their mindspace and we believe ShareChat balances this need of a content+social discovery platform in the best fashion.”

ShareChat is available in 6 languages, namely, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi. Tamil and Bengali are currently in private beta and will be shortly made available for all users. The app has been downloaded 3.5 million times, with roughly 2 million active users on the platform. At a daily level, 1 million content pieces get shared per day from ShareChat.

Mayank Khanduja, from SAIF Partners, says “ShareChat is in a very unique position in the Indian market today. We’ve worked closely with this team for the last one year and the way they have leveraged technology is outstanding.”

ShareChat was started by Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva, right after graduating from IIT-K. The fact that the founders hail from small towns has helped their cause in making their first gut impressions right. ShareChat started as a content repository app for sharing on Whatsapp, and has now evolved into a full-fledged social network.

“When we invested 2 years ago, we just had a team and an idea to build a social network for the masses. From the days of ideating in our office, the team has come a long way and has grown along with the business. We rate them as the best product team we have worked with, especially their approach of blending data with experiments." says Anand Lunia, from India Quotient, the first investor in ShareChat.

“We are excited about the product that ShareChat is building. We have always believed that a homegrown social product, built for the aam aadmi in vernacular, addresses a big opportunity in India. ” says Samir Sood, founder, Venture Highway, which is advised by Neeraj Arora, the Global Business Head of Whatsapp.

“It is always a great feeling to be backed by good investors who understand the space. But procurement of capital does not ensure success of a business, though being the lifeline considering we have a limited focus on revenue. The battle only goes uphill from here,” says Bhanu Singh, Co-founder and CTO, ShareChat.

“The fresh round of funds will be employed majorly for going deep into the vernacular ecosystem. Having multi-lingual interfaces is just not enough. We have literally just touched the surface of our target audience. These are early adopters. A lot of work is required on our part to make ShareChat a household brand, digging deep into the user base, and to bring even more interesting infotainment and utilities for our ever-expanding Indian market,” concludes Farid.

Language App ShareChat Bags $1.35M from SAIF Partners and India Quotient

SAIF Partners, the leading venture capital firm with over $4B under management has invested $1.35 million in ShareChat, the vernacular social network. The capital infusion is a part of ShareChat’s seed round of funding which also involved participation from existing investors, India Quotient. The company will leverage the funds raised towards ramping up its tech infrastructure to cater to its constantly growing user base and to reach out to more people across India with a variety of content formats.

Besides the validation that ShareChat has received from top institutional investors, it was also applauded for its approach when it was selected as one of the 6 startups invited for the second batch of Google Launchpad Accelerator program from India, which is a six-month mentorship program.

ShareChat has built a first-of-its-kind social networking platform for India’s vernacular language users, available in 4 Indian languages, namely Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Telugu which will be followed by many more. It has already crossed 1 million downloads, and at half a million monthly active users, it has been consistently growing at 10% week on week. ShareChat was started by three IIT Kanpur alumni, Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh and Ankush Sachdeva in 2015.

Farid Ahsan, CEO, ShareChat, said, “It’s highly motivating for us to get backed by SAIF Partners. ShareChat has started growing virally now and every new user strengthens the platform even further. It’s encouraging for us to see how our users have been responding and creating a really diverse variety in vernacular content on ShareChat. With the latest fund raise we plan to strengthen our technology to serve the increasing traffic on ShareChat and expand into more languages and content types.”

Mayank Khanduja, Principal, SAIF Partners, said, “We’re very confident about team ShareChat’s understanding of what we see as a massive market opportunity. Moreover, we feel it’s the best team for the job as the co-founders have strong technical backgrounds and a highly data driven approach. The platform is powerful enough to solve the content and the social networking needs of the growing Indian smartphone users.”

Indian Internet users living in non-metro cities find it very difficult to discover content and information, especially first-time internet users, owing to poor network connections on smartphones and the native language barrier thanks to the English-first flavour of apps. These are the gaps that ShareChat seeks to plug and with this round of funding it aims to make social networking in the vernacular accessible for a larger number of users across India.

ShareChat currently allows users to follow each other, create and find content in their preferred language, and share to chat platforms like Whatsapp. ShareChat started as a content sharing tool for Whatsapp and witnessed traction of 1 million shares a week.It has now made rapid strides towards building its full-fledged social platform. Already 5 million connections have been made on ShareChat and the rapid success of user generated content is a very exciting sign that ShareChat users were desperately looking for a platform like this.