 |
| Twitter wants to make Moj a competitor to TikTok |
Twitter recently held talks to acquire ShareChat, an Indian social media company, to make Moj a global competitor to TikTok.
The company is trying to explore various ways to expand its influence in the second largest internet market in the world and create a global competitor for the TikTok platform.
The US company invested in ShareChat, offered to acquire the 5-year-old Indian startup for $ 1.1 billion, and committed an additional $ 900 million investment.
To date, ShareChat has raised about $ 260 million, but the negotiations have not resulted in a deal and it is not clear why the two companies ended the negotiations.
Twitter has announced its intention to launch Moj, a short video app within ShareChat, on the international market and position it as a competitor to the Chinese app TikTok.
The TikTok ban in India last year prompted dozens of local startups and global giants to try their luck in the short video business.
Moj has over 80 million users making it one of the biggest players in the industry.
Earlier this month, the US company Snap signed an agreement with ShareChat to integrate its cameras into the Indian video app.
This is the first collaboration between the US company Snap and the Indian company.
With the acquisition negotiations concluded, ShareChat has resumed negotiations with other investors (including Google and Snap) for a new round of financing.
In January this year, the Indian company negotiated with Google, Snap and some existing investors, including Twitter, to raise more than $ 200 million in financing.
The potential acquisition of Twitter extended investment negotiations.
ShareChat provides social networking apps in up to 15 Hindi languages with over 160 million users and has a large audience in small cities in India.
Almost no participant in the Indian startup ecosystem can cover this group of people.
ShareChat co-founder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva said last year that the startup's Marquee app is growing exponentially, with users spending an average of more than 30 minutes per day on the service.
According to AppAnnie, the Twitter platform itself has struggled to thrive outside major Indian cities, and its app attracted nearly 75 million users nationwide in January.
Sign an agreement with the dailyhunt news and social app to integrate moments (some tweets about other local news and events) into the Indian powered Google app.
Under pressure from activist investors to accelerate growth, American social networks expanded their product line last year.