Current Valuation: $5 bn (June 22)

Funding Raised: $1.7 bn (May 22)

Funding Rounds: 17

No. Of Investors: 45

Loss: $363.7 million (FY22)

Revenue: $42.3 million (FY22)

Did you know ShareChat, India’s 47th unicorn, was co-founder Ankush Sachdeva's 18th attempt to build a startup?

Founded by three IITians from IIT Kanpur, Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva in 2015, ShareChat aimed at providing Indian users a platform to express themselves.

Studying at IIT Kanpur, Ankush was a BTech Computer Science, Farid Ahsan was a BTech Material Science and Engineering student, and Bhanu was an Electrical Engineering student.

Social networking platforms have existed for a couple of decades, but most have been built with English as the base.

The regional audience has its own preferences when it comes to content consumption, which could not be served by social products used by the metro audience. To address this, ShareChat was introduced.

It is available in 15 languages and provides its users with vernacular content such as health tips, remedies, weight loss, religious quotes, and dictionaries.

According to one of the co-founders, Ankush, “One of the biggest challenges we have is teaching the audience what a feed is, why you follow someone, why you create content.”

ShareChat does not charge its users to earn revenue, but instead generates revenue through advertisements, payment transactions, and sponsored campaigns.