“As of today at a consolidated company level, we are on a run rate of ₹65 crore annualized losses, which means on a monthly basis, we’re losing just above ₹5 crore,” Manohar Singh Charan, Chief Financial Officer, ShareChat and MOJ told reporters at a briefing.
ShareChat’s advertising revenue registered a growth of 23% year-on-year (Y-O-Y), reaching ₹315 crore. The company attributed the growth to their strategic diversification of client base across various verticals, particularly in the FMCG sector and amongst mid-market advertisers.
The livestreaming segment continued an impressive growth trajectory, recording a 41% Y-o-Y uptick, reaching ₹402 crore for the fiscal year 2024. The surge was driven by continued growth momentum in paying user count across both ShareChat and Moj platforms. The Moj app has achieved operational profitability (effectively covering all costs except employee salaries) and is expected to be fully profitable by end of FY25, , the firm said in a statement.
“If you were to look at the standalone P&L of ShareChat app, that is at 15% positive. MOJ is contribution positive, which means the revenue is enough to cover all costs except salaries. It is covering some of the salary costs, but not full of it. So, if you remove salaries out, MOG is generating 20% positive contribution margin,” added Charan.
ShareChat is expecting EBITDA losses for FY25 to be nearly one third of FY24 and the consolidated business to start generating positive cash flow by early FY26.
“Over the past few years we have been successful in cutting our costs significantly and ramping up our revenue. This, coupled with our strategic investment in product development and state of the art recommendation engine, have charted our path to profitability, with the ShareChat app achieving EBITDA profitability. We are confident that we will reach this milestone at a company level in the coming months,” added Ankush Sachdeva, CEO and Cofounder, ShareChat & Moj.
In Auguss, the startup, which counts Google, Lightspeed, and Temasek among its investors, had raised an additional $16 million in debt financing through convertible debentures, increasing the total size of its previous debt round to $65 million.
With improved financial metrics, the company expects to start investing back into growth and is “actively” looking out for inorganic opportunities through acquisitions. Organic growth will happen through the expansion of the user base and increasing revenue per user.
ShareChat will look to add more people to its captable ahead to a potential IPO in 18-24 months.
“The company is sufficiently capitalized and beyond that we are looking to add more people to captable as we prepare for our IPO journey. So, we will try and do one more round before that. Usual practice is that you prove at least two quarters of profitability and then go for your IPO preparation. We are aiming for profitability by FY25. We have to prove two quarters of profitability and then take another 12 months of IPO process,” said Charan.
ShareChat claims to have over 325 million monthly active users across its platforms. This includes 180 million monthly active users on its eponymous social media platform and nearly 160 million monthly active users on Moj. Over the past year and a half, ShareChat has reduced its workforce by around 850 employees across multiple rounds of layoffs.
The firm has also shut down its fantasy gaming vertical, Jeet11, and discontinued MX Takatak, the short video platform it acquired from Times Internet for $600 million.
