Inside The Leadership Behind ShareChat’s ₹1,000 Cr Turnaround

Google-backed social media startup ShareChat is planning for a $400 Mn IPO by next year. It crossed ₹1,000 Cr in operating revenue in FY26 and reported EBITDA and net profitability in the first quarter (Q1) of FY27.

The cash-flow-positive startup has also narrowed its adjusted losses sharply over the past two years, helped by microdramas, which now contribute roughly 25% of its total revenue.

ShareChat’s situation was very different a few years ago. The startup was grappling with slowing growth, mounting losses, repeated layoffs and questions over whether it could build a sustainable business beyond chasing scale.

Behind its turnaround has been a series of leadership decisions that reshaped the startup’s priorities. Instead of chasing every opportunity in India’s social media market, ShareChat focused on fewer, bigger bets. It tightened spending, doubled down on AI, expanded microdramas across its ecosystem instead of treating them as a standalone experiment, and built a management structure that rewarded speed and accountability.

Inside ShareChat, one story is still frequently cited when employees talk about how decisions are made.

Moj: ShareChat’s Salvation Story 

On June 29, 2020, the government banned TikTok, along with dozens of Chinese apps, leaving a vacuum in the country’s short video market. Instead of spending weeks debating a response, ShareChat’s leadership team decided to build its own alternative. Within 30 hours, Moj was ready for the Google Play Store. 

The launch has since become an integral part of ShareChat’s playbook. It showed how quickly the organisation could move when leadership is aligned. The launch of Moj also shaped how product teams approached future launches. 

This style became even more important after the funding slowdown forced startups to rethink their strategies. ShareChat was among the startups that cut jobs, not once but many times, and shut non-core verticals such as Jeet11 and MX TakaTak. Inside the startup, speed was no longer measured by how quickly a new feature could be launched. It became about how quickly teams could respond to business problems. 

A weekly central business review meeting became one of the mechanisms that tied different functions together. The meetings were not limited to reviewing financial metrics. Teams from engineering, product and business were expected to solve problems rather than operate in silos. 

One example came when the startup set out to reduce infrastructure costs. Advertising revenue had slowed during a non-festive quarter, making it difficult to improve margins through topline growth alone. Instead of treating the issue as a finance problem, engineering teams were pulled into the discussion. More engineers were assigned to optimise server costs, helping narrow the gap between infrastructure spending and advertising income. 

That level of coordination became increasingly important as the startup shifted its focus from growth at any cost to improving operating metrics. 

Leadership has played a vital role during these transitions. Major strategic shifts from the launch of Moj after the TikTok ban to the startup’s push towards profitability and its bet on microdramas have largely been communicated by cofounder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva himself rather than through corporate announcements alone. 

For investors, such things matter because they offer clues about how management reacts when market conditions change. 

ShareChat’s Microdrama Playbook 

The startup’s biggest product decisions over the last few years have seen a similar pattern. Rather than scaling new formats based on early user interest alone, leadership waited for evidence that making changes to its recommendation systems could improve engagement at scale. 

The first major signal came when ShareChat deployed its deep learning recommendation model, which increased time spent on the platform by about 40%. The result encouraged the startup to apply a similar AI strategy to microdramas. As a result, microdrama engagement increased by 50%. This shaped what happened next. 

Then, instead of treating microdramas as another content category, ShareChat’s leadership turned it into a company-wide priority. The format was rolled across ShareChat, Moj and QuickTV rather than being developed within one product. The decision reflected a broader shift in how the startup approached product strategy. Bigger bets were no longer tied to individual apps; they were made at the portfolio level and then executed across the ecosystem. 

This is now visible in the business. Microdramas contributed nearly ₹250 Cr in FY26, as per sources. Advertising revenue from the format, currently estimated at ₹80-90 Cr, is projected to almost double to about ₹150 Cr in FY27. 

Distribution has also worked in its favour. Nearly 89% of microdrama discovery happens through social media feeds instead of search, which brings down its customer acquisition cost steadily. The startup says it reached around 60 Mn monthly active microdrama viewers and records roughly 750 Mn daily episodic plays. 

While operating revenue remained largely flat between FY24 and FY25, the startup used the period to improve unit economics and identify businesses that could support future growth. By FY26, revenue climbed to an estimated ₹1,000 Cr while adjusted losses narrowed to about ₹100 Cr from ₹793 Cr two years ago. 

Building A Stable Leadership Team For The Quest

ShareChat’s turnaround was not driven by its founders alone. While cofounder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva continues to lead the startup more than a decade after launching it, the startup’s leadership structure has evolved considerably over the past few years. In 2023, cofounders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan stepped away from day-to-day operations to build ventures of their own, leaving Sachdeva behind. 

The transition, however, was accompanied by a broader reshuffle across the organisation. Until April 2025, ShareChat saw several senior executives depart, including Gaurav Jain (CBO), Anurag Verma (head of people and culture) and Shashank Shekhar (senior director, content and strategy). The exits came as the startup was restructuring its business, reducing costs and narrowing its focus to businesses with clear monetisation potential. 

At the same time, the startup rebuilt parts of its leadership with the appointment of former TikTok India executive Nitin Jain to strengthen its monetisation and business operations. It elevated CFO Manohar Charan to the role of cofounder, giving more importance to financial discipline. 

Today, the startup’s senior leadership team has a median tenure of over four years, with many executives staying through the thick and thin of funding slowdown, multiple rounds of restructuring and the shift towards profitability. 

As ShareChat heads towards an IPO, public market investors will scrutinise revenue growth and margins, but they will also assess whether the management team can continue making disciplined product and capital allocation decisions under the pressure of a listed company.

Edited By Shishir Parasher
Creatives: Abhyam Gusai

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