Twitter-backed ShareChat buys meme sharing platform Memer

Vernacular social media platform ShareChat has acquired Kae Capital-backed meme sharing platform Memer to integrate the latter’s product suite into its content offerings.

ShareChat did not disclose the value of the transaction.

As part of the deal, Memer’s eight-member team will join ShareChat, according to a statement.

“We are on active lookout for startups that complement our product capabilities and share the vision of serving diverse content and social needs of Indian masses,” Manohar Charan, vice president of corporate development and strategic finance at ShareChat, said.

“In no time, the platform (Memer) became popular across Hindi-speaking markets with healthy hyper local communities. Gradually, we discovered memes to be an excellent content format to stimulate hyperlocal communities across the country. However, we needed a larger platform to supercharge the distribution of our product features,” Amit Singh, co-founder and CEO at Memer, said.

Singh founded Memer in 2018 with fellow IIT alumni Chetan Dalal and Chandramauli Singh. The company claims  that users have created over a million original content on its platform.

“We had backed the Memer team when it was at an idea stage. Over time, they worked on multiple products to solve for content creation. Memer was their fourth product in the same direction. The team has built a unique understanding of community building and content creation through their multiple product iterations over the last two years,” Navin Honagudi, managing director at Kae Capital, said.

Memer is ShareChat’s second acquisition this year -- it bought social commerce platform Elanic in February. 

While Charan said that ShareChat was open to more content-driven acquisitions, the Bengaluru-based company is reportedly also scouting for deals in artificial intelligence, machine learning and online gaming sectors. 

The platform, run by parent operator Mohalla Tech, has 60 million users across 15 languages. The five-year old startup last raised $100 million in a growth round in August from Twitter and others. The deal marked the US micro-blogging site’s first India based investment. The company widened its losses 12-fold to Rs 414.7 crore in the financial year 2018-19.