ShareChat Cofounders Bhanu Pratap Singh, Farid Ahsan Step Down From Active Roles

Content unicorn ShareChat’s founders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan have stepped down from their active roles. However, both founders will continue to remain a part of the company’s board.

ShareChat’s CEO Ankush Sachdeva intimated the decision to employees in an internal email today (25 January).

The email reads, “Over the last few months, we have onboarded several senior leaders in Engineering, Finance, HR and Content Ops who Bhanu & Farid have helped in getting ramped up and become well-equipped in steering the company going forward.” 

In place of Singh and Ahsan, ShareChat’s CFO Manohar Singh Charan and senior VP Gaurav Bhatia will be leading management and engineering roles in the company. 

“After nearly eight years of building ShareChat to unicorn status, Bhanu and Farid have chosen to step down from their active roles in the company. ShareChat would not be the company it is, without their contributions,” ShareChat’s spokesperson said. 

The development comes on the heels of ShareChat’s parent firm Mohalla Tech laying off 20% (500) of its workforce earlier this year. 

Prior to this, in December 2022, Inc42 reported that the parent company Mohalla Tech closed down its fantasy gaming platform Jeet11, which resulted in sacking of 100 employees. 

Set up in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Singh and Farid Ahsan, Mohalla Tech operates short video app Moj and content platform ShareChat . 

So far Mohalla Tech secured $1.4 Bn to date. Its last valuation stood at $5 Bn and its cap table includes Times Group, Google, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Twitter, Temasek and Moore Strategic Ventures, among others. 

In February 2022, short video platform MX TakaTak announced a strategic merger with ShareChat’s Moj. The acquisition deal was pegged at about $700 Mn. 

In the financial year 2022, ShareChat reported a loss of INR 2,988.6 Cr against INR 1460.9 Cr in FY23. Meanwhile, its total revenue stood at INR 419.2 Cr in FY22 as compared to INR 80.4 Cr in FY21.

In recent times, we are seeing plenty of top-level executives and cofounders exiting their respective roles. Recently, foodtech unicorn Zomato’s cofounder and CTO Gunjan Patidar has quit. 

Before that, Zomato’s cofounder Mohit Gupta also resigned in November last year. During the same time, Zomato’s head of initiatives Rahul Ganjoo and VP of global growth Siddharth Jhawar left the startup. 

In a similar chain of events, this month, fintech unicorn BharatPe’s CEO Suhail Sameer also stepped down from his role owing to 3X losses reported by the startup in FY22. 

Last year, Metaversity cofounder Manish Maheshwari exited the company owing to uncertainty over the startup’s future and direction.