ShareChat: Microdrama Focus for Profitability

Indian social media platform ShareChat is shifting its strategic focus from trying to compete directly with giants like Instagram to betting big on microdramas. This pivot comes after years of navigating market trends and investor scrutiny, with the company now aiming for profitability and sustainable growth.

Manohar Charan, ShareChat’s cofounder and CFO, acknowledged the difficulty of competing head-on with Silicon Valley giants. “We tried the replacement angle and finally realized that network effects were too strong,” Charan told Inc42. He emphasized that ShareChat’s scale, capital, and technology couldn’t match those of Meta or Google.

Founded in 2015 as a regional language alternative to Facebook and Twitter, ShareChat initially aimed to replicate the success of Western social media platforms in the Indian market. However, the company realized that competing with these established players, as well as the Chinese short-video app TikTok, was a significant challenge.

The Indian government’s ban on TikTok in 2020 provided a boost to Indian social media apps, including ShareChat’s Moj. However, the growth of these apps has since slowed, and ShareChat has had to rethink its strategy.

Despite raising over $1.3 billion from investors like Google, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Temasek, ShareChat is now focusing on microdramas as a key revenue driver. According to Charan, the company crossed the ₹1,000 crore revenue mark for FY26 and achieved nine consecutive months of positive cash flow.

To improve its financial performance, ShareChat halted user acquisition spending and focused on reducing server costs. The company’s engineering team rewrote legacy code, optimized compute allocation, and built infrastructure to migrate between cloud vendors more efficiently. As a result, ShareChat reduced its cloud compute cost from $1.80 per user to approximately 60 cents.

While ShareChat’s core social networking business has plateaued, the company sees potential in the microdrama market. ShareChat launched QuickTV in February 2025 and is competing with other players in the space, such as KukuTV and EloElo.

Charan believes that the microdrama market has the potential to be as large as YouTube in India. However, he also acknowledges the challenges of user churn and the need to build a sustainable ecosystem for creators and advertisers.

ShareChat’s dual-track approach involves using QuickTV to drive user engagement on Moj and generate advertising revenue. The company’s freemium model includes both paying subscribers and free users who generate revenue through advertising.

As ShareChat continues to evolve, it faces questions about the scalability of its advertising model, its ability to retain its regional-language creator base, and its competitiveness in the microdrama subscription market.