New Delhi, Dec 16 (IANS): Mohalla Tech, the parent company of homegrown social media apps Moj and ShareChat, on Thursday raised $266 million as part of its Series G round, at a valuation of $3.7 billion.
This is Mohalla Tech's third round of funding in 2021, with $913 million cumulatively raised this year. With social and live commerce initiatives, the company hopes to reach a target of $100 million annualised creator earnings by the end of 2023.
"Both our products (Moj and ShareChat) 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. This fresh funding will further strengthen our position," said Ankush Sachdeva, CEO and Co-founder, Moj and ShareChat.
The fresh investment was led by Alkeon Capital with participation from new and existing investors including Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV), Harbourvest and India Quotient.
The funding, said the company, will help build deep capabilities on priority areas such as social and live commerce, growing its AI/ML team which is now over a 100 people strong and spread across the US, Europe and India.
Since January, the company has grown to over 2,000 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.
"In one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic internet markets in the world" with an estimated over 600 million (mostly mobile) internet users "ShareChat is already entrenched as the largest and most engaging social and digital media platform," said Deepak Ravichandran, General Partner at Alkeon Capital.
Founded in 2015, Mohalla Tech has now raised over $1.177 billion across eight fundraising rounds.
Moj has an average user time spent of 34 minutes every day, scoring over 4.5 billion views daily. ShareChat is positioned uniquely with an average user time spent of 31 minutes daily.
Moj and ShareChat together have a 340 million-strong user community, according to the company.