Mohalla Tech, the parent company of ShareChat and the company behind the short video platform Moj, has acquired $255 million (about Rs 2,000 crore) in capital from Google, the Times Group (which owns this newspaper), and other current stakeholders. In December, the social media site secured $266 million as part of the same investment round, bringing the total generated to $520 million. The company is now valued at $5 billion as a result of the round.

In 2021, ShareChat, which became a unicorn (a company valued at $1 billion or more) last year, raised $913 million. Throughout all of its platforms, the company has about 400 million monthly active users. ShareChat is a social media company formed in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan. Its brands include ShareChat App, Moj, and TakaTak. Moj is a video-sharing service, and TakaTak is a short video-making app. ShareChat is an Indian language social networking service.

“We are thrilled to announce the closure of our investment round and the addition of Google and The Times Group to our cap table,” said Sachdeva, the company’s CEO. Despite the hurdles, investor faith in ShareChat’s efforts and capacity to grow further is heartening. The focus for the coming year will be on maximising scale and developing stable revenue models. Mohalla has developed a variety of revenue streams outside of advertising, including virtual gifts and video shopping. The company claims that virtual gifting is gaining a lot of traction on the ShareChat app.