Temasek co-leads $145m round of Twitter-backed Indian social media firm

India’s Mohalla Tech, which operates social networking platform ShareChat and short-video app Moj, has raised US$145 million in a new funding round led by Temasek and Moore Streategic Ventures.

The round also saw participation from Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund.

Photo credit: Mohalla Tech

Mohalla Tech said the latest fundraise, which is an extension of its series F round, values the company at close to US$2.9 billion. To date, the Bengaluru-based firm has raised more than US$911 million across seven fundraising rounds.

In April, Mohalla Tech raised US$502 million, which helped it join the unicorn club with a valuation of US$2.1 billion. The round saw participation from Tiger Global Management, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Twitter, and Snap, among others.

According to the firm, the fresh capital will be used to bring more users and content creators on board and improve its AI capabilities. It added that the company was looking to hire more AI and machine learning specialists.

Founded in 2015, Mohalla Tech’s ShareChat is a social networking platform that supports Indian languages. The platform has more than 180 million monthly active users who spend an average of 31 minutes on the platform every day, according to the company.

Moj is a relatively newer offering from Mohalla Tech. Launched in 2020 following a ban on TikTok in India, Moj has emerged as one of the top short-video apps in the country with about 160 million monthly active users and more than 50 million content creators.

“To strengthen our leadership position, we will continue to invest in our AI capabilities, scaling our global AI [organization], building advanced editing tools, and helping our creators monetize on the platform,” said Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and CEO of both Moj and ShareChat.

Moj competes with several TikTok-like Indian social networking platforms, including Google- and Microsoft-backed Josh, and Tencent-backed MX TakaTak.