Ankush Sachdeva founded ShareChat with his two IITIAn friends Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh in 2015. The startup is currently valued at 5 Billion Dollars (more than 40000 crores) and is funded by giants like Google
AASHISH KUMAR JHA | May 2, 2023 |
Ankush Sachdeva: An IITIAN who Failed 17 times Before Founding a Start-Up worth 40000 Crores+ Entertaining Regional Audiences
Ankush Sachdeva: Social networking platforms have only been around for a few years since smartphones and the internet revolutionized the way people interact. People with common interests began to come together nicely beyond the constraints of language and geography with the emergence of social networks. However, most social media platforms are designed with English as the foundation, with English language speakers and others who know English around the world in mind. As a result, the necessity for alternative vernacular social networking apps was evident in India and other nations where language variety is important in expressing the essence of their cultures. This is where Ankush Sachdeva, founder of ShareChat comes into the picture.
In total, Sachdeva failed 17 times before finally hitting the jackpot with ShareChat. The platform’s success can be attributed to Sachdeva’s keen understanding of the Indian market and his vision to create a platform that caters to the unique needs of Indian users. Sachdeva recognized that there was a significant gap in the market for a vernacular social media platform that could connect users from smaller towns and cities, where Facebook and other platforms were not as popular due to the English language complexity of the giant apps.
ShareChat’s holding company Mohalla Tech Private Limited was founded in January 2015 as a social networking platform for Indian audiences. For now, the platform is available in 15 languages for Indian users: Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, and English. ShareChat offers its customers a variety of vernacular content in areas like as health recommendations, DIY treatments, weight reduction, religious quotes, and dictionaries, to mention a few.
Ankush was always a very dedicated and intelligent person since his high school days. He completed his senior secondary schooling at Somerville School. He then enrolled at IIT Kanpur in 2011 to pursue a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Computer Science. He completed his B.Tech. degree in 2015. He interned at Microsoft from May to July 2014. To pursue his entrepreneurial career, he did not participate with full dedication during campus placements.
Sachdeva’s life was marked by his passion for technology. During his final academic year, companies began to arrive for placements, and Ankush was likewise eager to find a suitable position. Ankush’s situation became more uncomfortable when a batchmate received a Rs 2 crore offer from Oracle. It quickly became national news and reached Ankush’s family, who, along with his relatives, began pressuring Ankush to get a job.
Ankush Sachdeva had tried to found 17 startups earlier but all of them seemed failed attempts. During this process, Ankush and his friends observed that people wanted to consume quality content but didn’t know how to get good content. As a result, they required a way to find good material. This prompted Ankush, and his two IITIAN friends Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh to collaborate on the Sharechat app, which was launched in October 2015.
In 2015, Ankush Sachdeva founded ShareChat with his friends from IIT Kanpur which was basically a social media platform aimed at connecting users from smaller Indian towns and cities. The app quickly became a great hit, with 1 lakh downloads in just three months. The biggest success factor of the Sharechat app is its focus on regional audiences, especially from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Because they were targeting people from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, they did not use English but instead included Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, and other regional languages which made it immensely popular. The app almost faced no major competition in this category, as the regional market was left untouched by big giants. ShareChat’s success can also be attributed to its innovative features and user-friendly interface. Some major milestones in the growth story of Sharechat are given below:
Sharechat is currently headquartered in Bangalore and Ankush serves as its CEO. As per information available on Wikipedia, the startup has a footprint of over 350 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages. The company employs over 2500 employees. Like any other social networking site, ShareChat allows its users to create, find, and share content with one another. Furthermore, Sharechat users can track regular updates by following other users on the same platform, whether they are content creators, friends, or anyone of interest. ShareChat members are not only interested in consuming the information found on the platform, but they are also participating in its creation.
The startup is valued at around 5 Billion Dollars (more than 40000 crores) as of June 2022. Sachdeva’s journey to success was far from easy. He faced numerous setbacks and failures before finally achieving his dream of building a successful company. Ankush Sachdeva’s journey to success is an inspiring story of perseverance and resilience. His failures did not deter him from pursuing his dreams, and his success with ShareChat is a testament to his vision and hard work. Sachdeva’s story is a reminder that failure is not the end, and success is possible with determination, hard work, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
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