Twitter to acquire ShareChat for $1.1 billion

Recently, TechCrunch reported that Twitter recently held talks to acquire ShareChat, aiming to expand its influence in the world's second-largest internet market and take on TikTok globally.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Bangalore, ShareChat is a social media startup in India and the first Indian social media platform with more than 160 million users.

Twitter, already an investor in ShareChat , offered to buy the Indian startup for $1.1 billion and pledged to invest an additional $900 million , according to people familiar with the matter.

In addition, sources also claimed that Twitter intends to launch the short video app Moj owned by ShareChat into the international market and position it as a competitor to the overseas version of TikTok.

Twitter declined to comment on the negotiations , and ShareChat did not respond to a request for comment.

It is no coincidence that Twitter is targeting the short video app Moj. Driven by the increasing penetration of smartphones, acceptable data prices and the depth of fresh entertainment content, short videos have become the fastest growing content category .

Once upon a time, TikTok was all the rage in the Indian market. According to RedSeer Management Consulting, as of June 2020, TikTok had about 167 million users in India, making India TikTok's largest overseas market .

However, since the conflict broke out on the Sino-Indian border in June last year , India has begun to frantically ban Chinese mobile applications, including TikTok.

Before the ban, the short video market in India had already achieved explosive growth , and the ban on TikTok left a huge gap . Many local startups and international giants have seized the opportunity and started to try to apply the short video format, and have achieved considerable results.

Take ShareChat as an example. According to Shashank Shekhar, content strategy director of Moj, Moj has achieved amazing growth, reaching 80 million monthly active users in the first few months after its launch . Users spend an average of 34 minutes on the platform every day , which shows the stickiness and popularity of the product.

In addition, YouTube launched an early beta version of Shorts in India last September, which was also very popular in India, with an average daily viewing volume of 3.5 billion times !

If Twitter also joins in, the competition in India’s short video industry will probably become even more intense!

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