Whereas tales of success at technology leaders often originate from stories of failures, few caps have had the kinds of challenges that faced Ankush Sachdeva. Ankush is an IIT Kanpur graduate who did not meet a couple of challenges; he struggled 17 times before tasting success with the 18th attempt. What could have been his reason for continuing to fight such stacking odds? This iswhy it all boils down to loyalty and vision. At the moment, he is the rising figure of the 2024 Hurun India Under 35 list of young businessmen who manage a company with a turnover of Rs 40,000 crore. Born with passion for technology, Ankush first pursued his bachelors in technology, graduating from IIT Kanpur with a Bachelor of Technology in Computer science. He chose academic years to do an internship at Microsoft back in 2014 which provided him with ample information about the operation of the sector. However, having more suitable options for a corporate job, as many of his peers did during that time, Ankush chose to go for the entrepreneurial bug.
The Road to Success: From IIT Kanpur to ShareChat
The journey of Ankush to become an entrepreneurial player started from his school Somerville School, Noida when he completed his initial schooling. But it was the IIT Kanpur where he got B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering which served as a backbone to all his succeeding endeavors . As a student in IIT, Ankush demonstrated his prowess in many tech competitions and clinched titles such as that of the TechOlympics Algorithmic Programming Contest, and the ACM ICPC Asia Regionals in 2012.
All these accomplishments showed his great technical ability but Ankush wanted to do much more than being a great programmer. Enumerating his achievements, it is worth to mention about internship in Microsoft Hyderabad where he got the idea about working in the IT environment. But instead of going the corporate way, Ankush decided to live his dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
Mohalla Tech Private Limited was founded by three IIT friends Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan along with Ankush Singla in the year 2015 gave rise to ShareChat. Some of the future features of this social media platform would revolutionalize how Indian use social media – especially in regional languages.
From Failures to Triumph: The Birth of ShareChat
It was not at all an easy process to build ShareChat. Ankush and his co-founders tried out 17 ideas and products before finally hitting the jackpot: They launched a service that used technology to solve crime using the Delhi Police crime data.
Among the many, none of these yielded positive outcomes. But they managed to succeed when they founded ShareChat in 2015 – when they developed a product that was recognized by users and allowed them to share and consume content in India’s regional languages. It must be mentioned that starting from quite a simple concept which was then proposed it quickly became a phenomenon in the country.
Leading ShareChat to Unicorn Status
Ankush has provided a direction to ShareChat and contributed immensely to make the company a success. He joined Reynok as the Chief Product Officer and was later promoted to take up the mantle of the company’s CEO in 2017 bringing the company through different levels of growth.
ShareChat is now a massive and truly Indian social media platform with over 180 million active users per month and supporting content in 15 Indian languages. It is much more used by people who consume content in languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and so on.
However, ShareChat’s path to becoming a unicorn company has been a meteoric one. Currently, it is one of the most successful Indian start-ups with the current valuation at $5 billion. Later, Ankush and his team attracted large value funding from global investors including SAIF Partners, DCM Shriram, Twitter and Google and others in recent years and they funded more than $700M.
Such funding has boosted the company’s ability to grow the number of users, continuously to improve on the features in the platform, and to strengthen its foothold in the market..
ShareChat’s Unique Offerings and Challenges
ShareChat’s unique proposition lies in its ability to cater to a diverse Indian audience, offering content in multiple vernacular languages.
The platform allows users to watch and share trending videos, connect in chat rooms, and engage with content tailored to their language preferences. Unlike mainstream social media platforms, ShareChat prioritizes local languages over English, giving it an edge in reaching the non-English-speaking population.
However, the journey hasn’t been without its challenges. Like many companies, ShareChat faced the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the difficult decision to lay off 25% of its workforce in 2020. Despite these hurdles, the platform has continued to innovate, launching new features and services to retain user engagement.
The Creation of Moj: India’s Answer to TikTok
In 2020, Ankush and his team responded to the ban on TikTok in India by launching Moj, a short-video platform designed to fill the void left by TikTok’s exit. The app has already garnered over 100 million downloads on Google Play Store and is positioned as one of the leading short-form video platforms in the country. Moj is part of Mohalla Tech’s broader strategy to dominate the social media space in India by providing alternatives to popular international platforms.
Expanding Horizons: Investments and Acquisitions
Like in ShareChat, Ankush is an entrepreneur at heart, too. He has invested in various well-known startups involved in technologies and included in the funding round of General Autonomy, Wishlink, and Curelink, etc. It is clear from Table 1 that he also invested in start-ups that aim at developing the tech industry in India.
Other companies bought by Mohalla Tech under the leadership of Ankush include Elanic, a social commerce platform, Memer – an application for sharing memes, and Circle Internet – a hyperlocal information platform. Together with these acquisitions, ShareChat has added depth to the services it offers, giving it broader opportunities to cover clients’ needs.
Net worth
Another notable personality with a significant stake on ShareChat is Ankush Sachdeva, the co-founder of ShareChat and the company’s current CEO or Chief Executive Officer of the company who has been able to amass a fortune since the company was established in 2015. Currently, Ankush Sachdeva is worth about 500 million US dollars as of 2024. Most of this wealth can be attributed to the swift growth and appreciation that ShareChat enjoys today with an estimated value of around $5 billion.
Furthermore, the patent has garnered significant funding from top global luminaries of the sector namely Twitter, Google, and Temasek Holdings strengthening Sachdeva’s fiscal positioning. Besides, his invention of Moj, a short-video making platform which was launched after TikTok was banned in India, also consolidates his authority in the digital sector, combining with his financial capital.
Awards and Recognition
It should be noted that there is no lack of achievements for Ankush Sachdeva. He was also ranked as the youngest entrepreneur or under 35 years in the Hurun India under the 35 list of 2024, and also been named as Forbes 30 under 30 Asia of year 2018. He has been so obsessed with perfection and his capability to turn ShareChat into a unicorn this has made him an icon for any aspiring entrepreneur in India.
Looking Ahead: The Future of ShareChat
With ShareChat still in its early stages, Ankush has kept his sight on increasing the coverage of the app and the richness of the features it offers. As of 2019, ShareChat has more than 500 million downloads, and the number of its users steadily increases, and therefore, it has a great potential for further development under Bajaj’s management.
Ankush has plans for cheerful to make profits by adding new features and services and at the same time maintain its focus on the mission of the company as it serves the utility of the Indian users to share their experiences or communicate in their own language.
Conclusion
True from being an IT student at IIT Kanpur to being the CEO of a billion dollar company, Ankush Sachdeva’s story is one of passion and determination. He has turned ShareChat into the most popular social media that has changed the way people communicate online as true representatives of the India of languages.
He has been constantly leading ShareChat as well as Moj, its sister platform, and in the process, he is defining the already disrupted future of Indian social media markets, one vernacular language at a time.
