India's next growth story has to have a regional focus, says ShareChat's Ajit Varghese

Home-grown social media company ShareChat is building diversified monetisation avenues beyond advertising in areas like virtual gifting and video commerce. Mohalla Tech, its parent company, also runs India's largest short video platforms Moj and TakaTak, besides the ShareChat app, which has more than 400 million users. The recently-turned unicorn told Business Today that with digital penetration going up, touching almost 600-700 million today, every individual is getting a voice.

"As it goes to 1 billion-level, we will see everybody is satisfying either their content need or utility need or access need. To me, that part of India is helping us grow in the next decade. And that India is very heterogeneous. So, the next India growth story has to have a regional focus. And it’s already happening with either translations or using AI (Artificial intelligence) to capture a larger audience," Ajit Varghese, Chief Commercial Officer, ShareChat said.

In June, ShareChat raised $255 million from Google, Times Group, and Temasek, and reached $5 billion in valuation. Moj, which competes with a number of players like Josh and Tiki in the short video format space, has grown to become a popular short video app with over three times daily active users and two times daily time spent per user compared to its nearest domestic competitor, according to the company.

TikTok parent company ByteDance was also planning a comeback into the country, according to reports. "More players coming into a particular sector only shows that there is enough room for players right now. Consumer interest rate is on the rise and competition increases the focus on product and user experience. Whether TikTok comes or not, there's always Instagram, which is a competition. But any kind of competition in a way improves you. So, currently our focus is entirely on ensuring that the users which have given us the confidence, how do we make sure that their experience, their retention, their growth path, and affinity to our apps continues growing?" Varghese says.

"Competition will keep putting pressure, but our job will be getting that experience and that retention going right," he adds.

ShareChat said that with a whole lot of 'Bharat' getting access to the internet, a lot of hyper-local language content is getting prominence. "That that is actually fulfilling a certain need for people which is not just the popular content, but how can I get more and more fresh content, where which can both satisfy my hunger for content is also keeping it very here and now in terms of what is relevant," he said.

After TikTok exited, Varghese adds, "we kind of led from the front in making sure that both at a content level and at a language level, at a hyperlocal level, we are able to build an ecosystem both across ShareChat and Moj by bringing short video form content and engagement into prominence."