ShareChat builds regional language live audio product, enables monetisation

Regional language-based social network Sharechat on Monday said it has successfully built and helped creators monetise a live audio product called Chatrooms.

The feature is essentially what Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces have made popular in the largely English-speaking world.

As of May, ShareChat’s Chatrooms had over  10.5 million users spending over 1.2 billion minutes on audio chatrooms monthly, Gaurav Mishra, SVP, ShareChat told Business Standard.

In a Medium post on Monday, the tech team of ShareChat said, “After launching in April 2020, we grew quickly to become the largest live audio product in the country, with 1.2 billion minutes being streamed on our platform monthly. We quickly realised that creator gratification was an essential part of our product, and moved on to launch virtual gifting features in chatrooms.”

The post, authored by Nishad Shah, Sameer Gupta and Mithun Madhusudan, said since its launch a year ago, the chatrooms feature has “completed the full cycle of engagement and monetisation of the product. We are growing usage and revenue fast, a testament to the speed of execution of the team”.

“We are encouraged by the participation of our community in the audio chatrooms at various levels. Both users and user time spent are increasing significantly every month. We are really impressed with the growth we have achieved with a six-member team which has now grown to over 20 people working across product and operations,” Mishra said.

Among the most interesting uses of the chatrooms, ShareChat found, were Satsangs, Antakshari, and even celebrating birthdays at midnight. Astrology, talent shows and radio shows are among the formats and segments ShareChat is exploring now, Mishra added.

The two main areas that live audio engaging for Sharechat’s regional language user base were that “conversation is audio-based not text-based, which automatically makes it more understandable and engaging” and “audio also removes the friction of ‘getting ready for the camera’ that creators on other platforms are used to doing. This makes it easier for both men and women to participate in the conversation.”

In April, ShareChat’s parent company Mohalla Tech raised $502 million, in which it was valued at a little over $2.1 billion.

The investment round was led by Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global, along with participation from Snap Inc, Twitter, and India Quotient, among others.