ShareChat: Microdramas & Profitability Shift

After more than a decade of attempting to establish itself as a homegrown social media platform, ShareChat is shifting gears. Manohar Charan, cofounder and CFO, acknowledged the difficulty of competing with Silicon Valley giants, leading the company to reinvent its strategy.

Charan stated that ShareChat had been trying to be a replacement for major social media platforms but realized that the network effects of companies like Meta and Google were too strong to overcome. He noted the company is now focusing on microdramas rather than trying to replicate Instagram or TikTok.

This shift comes as ShareChat reported crossing ₹1,000 crore in revenue for FY26, with nine consecutive months of positive cash flow. The company had previously been spending $1.80 per user per year on cloud computing alone, compared to advertising revenue of just 30 cents per user, according to Charan.

To address this, ShareChat halted user acquisition spending and focused on reducing server costs. By early 2025, the company had reduced its cloud compute cost to approximately 60 cents per user through engineering efforts such as rewriting legacy code and developing differentiated compute allocation.

As a result, February 2025 marked the first month in ShareChat’s history where the closing cash balance exceeded the opening balance. While revenue remained stagnant from FY24 to FY25, adjusted losses dropped from ₹800 Cr to ₹219 Cr.

Looking ahead, ShareChat is betting on microdramas as its new revenue engine. The company launched QuickTV in February 2025 and aims to tap into the growing market for short, episodic content. While subscription models dominate the microdrama market, ShareChat aims to leverage advertising revenue through its Moj platform, which boasts 200 million retained users.

Charan noted that 95% of ShareChat’s audience overlaps with Meta and YouTube users, indicating that users are not choosing ShareChat instead of these platforms but using them in conjunction. He believes the user base for microdramas is as large as YouTube’s, and the company aims to build an ecosystem to retain users and monetize through ads.

With this new focus, ShareChat is gradually increasing user acquisition spending again, with the goal of recouping the cost of acquiring a Moj user within six months through advertising revenue.

ShareChat’s journey reflects a broader trend in India’s startup ecosystem, where the emphasis is shifting from replacing global incumbents to building sustainable businesses within their shadow. The company hopes its microdrama bet will be sustainable in the long run, driving growth and profitability.