Exclusive: ShareChat Parent Shuts Down Gaming Platform Jeet11, Lays Off 100 Employees

Mohalla Tech Private Ltd, the parent company of ShareChat, has pulled the plug on its fantasy gaming platform Jeet11, sources aware of the development told Inc42. 

The closure of Jeet11 resulted in layoffs of 100 employees. The laid off employees were mostly from non-tech roles, the sources said, adding that the gaming platform’s tech employees would be absorbed by ShareChat and Moj. 

In a statement, Mohalla Tech, the parent company of Jeet11, ShareChat and Moj, confirmed the development with Inc42. 

“As a standard business practice, we periodically evaluate our strategies. We can confirm that we are ceasing operations of Jeet11 and have reorganized some of our functions, which meant movement of this talent within teams and a few employee exits. This process has impacted less than 5% of our employees. We continue to focus on robust growth and hiring across various functions and roles as per our plans. To succeed as India’s fastest-growing social media company, we assess our strategy regularly and make necessary changes to achieve our vision,” the statement said.

Mohalla Tech launched Jeet11 as an experiment two years ago to foray into the gaming industry. The closure of the fantasy cricket platform followed Mohalla Tech’s decision to not burn more cash on it, the sources said.

It must be noted that earlier this year, Sequoia Capital-backed gaming unicorn MPL also laid off over 100 employees and exited the Indonesian market. 

The ongoing funding winter amid the global geopolitical tensions and fears of a looming recession has forced Indian startups to relook at their businesses and cut costs to increase their runway. Consequently, many startups like Udayy, Crejo.Fun and Lido Learning have shut operations in 2022 so far, while the Indian startup ecosystem has also seen a large number of layoffs.

The latest development about closure of Jeet11 comes just two days after Inc42 exclusively reported about ShareChat expanding its ESOP pool size to INR 2,375 Cr from INR 900 Cr. In June this year, ShareChat closed its Series H funding round worth $520 Mn in two tranches at a valuation of $5 Bn. It raised $266 Mn from Alkeon Capital, Temasek, HarbourVest, Moore Strategic Ventures and India Quotient late last year in the first tranche, while it raised the remaining amount from Google and Times Internet earlier this year. 

ShareChat became the first Indian social media startup to enter the unicorn club early last year. In April last year, the startup raised $502 Mn in its Series E round led by Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global, along with participation from Snap Inc, Twitter, and India Quotient, among others.

ShareChat also announced the merger of Times Internet-backed short video platform MX Taka TakTak with its own short-video platform Moj earlier this year. The deal was pegged at over $600 Mn, making it one of the biggest acquisitions of 2022. The combined platform was expected to have 100 Mn creators, 300 Mn monthly active users and nearly 250 Bn video views. 

As per Inc42’s layoff tracker, Indian startups have laid off 16,183 employees in 2022 so far.

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