ShareChat's adjusted Ebitda losses fall 67% to Rs 793 crore in FY24

ShareChat, the largest homegrown social media company, reported a 33 per cent year-on-year growth in revenue, reaching Rs 718 crore, up from Rs 540 crore in FY23. ShareChat also made significant strides in reducing losses as adjusted Ebitda losses fell by 67 per cent from Rs 2,400 crore in FY23 to Rs 793 crore in FY24.

 

Commenting on the financials, Ankush Sachdeva, chief executive officer and cofounder, ShareChat and Moj, said, “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, has 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.”

 

ShareChat’s advertising revenue registered a growth of 23 per cent year-on-year, reaching Rs 315 crore, despite a challenging macroeconomic landscape. The company attributed this success to its strategic diversification of the client base across various verticals, particularly in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector and among mid-market advertisers. The livestreaming segment continued an impressive growth trajectory, recording a 41 per cent year-on-year increase, reaching Rs 402 crore for FY24. The surge was driven by continued growth momentum in the paying user count across both ShareChat and Moj platforms.

 

Subsequent to the closure of FY24, the company accelerated its journey to profitability. As of October 2024, the ShareChat app is fully profitable at over 15 per cent Ebitda margin. The Moj app has achieved operational profitability (effectively covering all costs except employee salaries) and is expected to be fully profitable by the end of FY25. The profitability milestone has been made possible by a dual engine of revenue growth and cost optimisation, especially in the cost of server infrastructure, where ShareChat has managed to optimise server cost per user by 50 per cent since the beginning of 2024, according to Manohar Charan, chief financial officer, ShareChat.

 

On the revenue front, there has been a 25 per cent year-on-year increase in advertising revenue per user and a nearly 10 percentage point margin improvement in the livestreaming business. Aggressive efforts on feed ranking improvement resulted in a nearly 10 percentage point increase in the long-term retention of both ShareChat and Moj users, thereby allowing the company to cut user acquisition spends to near zero.

 

ShareChat expects Ebitda losses for FY25 to be nearly one-third of FY24, and the consolidated business to start generating positive cash flow by early FY26.

 

The firm is eyeing a timeline of 18–24 months for a possible initial public offering (IPO), depending on market conditions, according to Charan.

 

The company has raised a total funding of $1.22 billion from investors such as Temasek Holdings, Google, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, and Elevation Capital, according to the data platform Tracxn.

 

The company said it has over 325 million monthly active users (MAUs) across all its platforms. Founded in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, ShareChat has social media brands such as the ShareChat app and Moj under its portfolio.

 

In August, Mohalla Tech, which owns the ShareChat platform, said it raised Rs 134 crore ($16 million) through debt bonds from Singapore-based investment firm EDBI. With this fresh fundraise, the company expanded its ongoing convertible debentures round to $65 million.

 

In April this year, ShareChat raised $49 million via convertible debentures in a funding round led by existing investors, including Lightspeed, Temasek, and Alkeon Capital.

 

The company reportedly also retrenched 5 per cent of its staff after a mid-year performance review of employees.