ShareChat and a prayer
Once a promising Indian social network, ShareChat lost its way, and is now hoping to make a comeback in the absence of ByteDance’s Helo and TikTok.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: It wasn’t too long ago when ShareChat was the talk of the town. Birthed in late 2015, the Bengaluru-based company sold a promising story—a social network for those who want to communicate in their own, local languages. Targeted only at Indian language users—ShareChat still doesn’t support English language on its platform—it offered a service to chat and share images and videos in a way nobody did at the time. And in just about two years, it had everyone’s attention. Investors such as venture fund Shunwei and smartphone maker Xiaomi were all interested in what this company was building. Five years on and the ShareChat story has largely been about its initial promise and subsequent struggle—the fight against a much stronger rival that outspent it every step of the way. Helo—a copycat app built by TikTok owner ByteDance—brought nothing but challenges for the company, according to conversations with at least six former ShareChat executives. All of them asked not to be named while talking about their former employer. Almost every other day, Helo would add new stumbling blocks for ShareChat, sending …
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