MAM
How ShareChat enables 150+ brands to engage with India’s heartland
NEW DELHI: With over 530 million people connected to the world wide web and counting, India has the second-largest internet user base in the world today. Out of these, around 71 per cent come from lower-tier cities, according to a Statista report. Another study by Zinnov indicates that 81 per cent of tier-2 and 80 per cent of the tier-3 population choose mobiles as the preferred platform for consuming content. Naturally, these numbers are quite attractive to the marketing community. With growing awareness, a rise in disposable income, and access to information, these netizens are also their next set of consumers. But the question is, what’s the most effective way to reach them?
ShareChat claims to have the answer. Founded in 2015 by three IIT-Kanpur graduates, Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, ShareChat is a unique social media platform – it’s available in 15 Indian languages and dialects, but not in English. It hosts content ranging from love, devotional, entertainment, to great user-generated material. With more than 160 million active users, it’s fair to say the app has a direct line to India’s heartland.
ShareChat director sales Satyajit Deb Roy shared, “Today, ShareChat is the only social media platform connecting language-first, new internet users at scale. We are at the forefront of the India's internet revolution. Users are coming to ShareChat to discover content, and also consume content in the comfort of their own language, societal norms and interests. Our user community is dominated by language-first internet users across the country, the majority of them hailing from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Exploring this space has been of utmost priority for brands, and ShareChat stays relevant with its capability to connect brands to language first internet users at scale, and in a targeted way.”
He added that the app’s focus remains on driving good performance advertisements and solutions for brands. “We have built our adtech solutions after evaluating brands’ needs and understanding consumer behaviour insights that we gathered over the years. We work with brands and marketers to design customised campaigns, relevant to their target audience. Taking their product deeper into the country and engaging with audiences they haven’t been able to do it at scale.”
Roy highlighted that within a year of starting monetisation, more than 150 brands have signed up and worked with them on multiple occasions.
“We have seen increasing interest from the companies belonging to e-commerce, consumer durables, FMCG, telecom, gaming, automotive and many more verticals. We are expanding our focus beyond these verticals and would like to cater to more than 25 consumer-focused verticals in the foreseeable future,” he elaborated.
Brands are open to partner with ShareChat not just because it has traditional advertising solutions in store for them. Rather, the platform brings in unique capabilities to drive maximum reach and retention for the advertisers.
Roy explained, “The intent is to connect brands with the targeted audience on our platform through every possible touchpoint. Apart from traditional digital marketing solutions like video/banner ads, we offer native ad formats, influencer-led conversational ads, user-generated content, creator-led ads, hashtags and impact options, et al.”
As brands demanded high impact for their campaigns on the platform, ShareChat introduced the idea of exit interstitial, which appears to the targeted users while exiting the platform. This generally includes a banner or a 6-second video. In addition to this, it has recently introduced a 360-degree solution called Divas. This drives engagement for the brands through branded user-generated content, hashtag challenges along with top creators and influencers on ShareChat to drive KPI's like sales, downloads etc. “That said, we have also rolled out programmatic solutions recently and are experimenting with a selective set of brands,” he quipped.
The app’s success and popularity are attracting good investments too. Just last year, the platform won a 100 million dollar financing round led by Twitter. Other investors include TrustBridge Partners, Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient, and Morningside Venture Capital. Reportedly, the company’s valuation today stands at 650 million dollar. Also, speculation is rife that Google is now eyeing to buy the platform.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
