ShareChat’s Senior Executives Anurag Verma & Shashank Shekhar Resign

Two senior executives at ShareChat, Anurag Verma and Shashank Shekhar, have resigned from their positions, sources close to the development told Inc42.

Shekar has been working as the senior director of content strategy and operations at ShareChat for the past four years. It is pertinent to note that this was Shekhar’s second stint at the company. Before this, he joined the startup in 2016 as content head and after two years he resigned to start his own venture Circle Internet.  

On the other hand, Verma has been serving as the head of people and culture at the company for the past 1.5 years. Prior to this, Verma worked as the vice president for human resources at B2B AI company Uniphore. He also worked with Flipkart and Airtel, heading their human resource verticals. 

Although it was not known about their next move, but an ET report said that while Shekar is looking to continue with his entrepreneurial journey, Verma is aiming to work in a more “peaceful” environment.

In a statement, a ShareChat spokesperson said, “We would like to thank both – Anurag Verma and Shashank Shekhar – for their immense contribution towards building an efficient and sustainable business and wish them the best in their future endeavours. They will be part of the organisation till April for a seamless transition and handover of responsibilities.”

The company added that Shekar’s team will directly report to ShareChat cofounder and CEO Ankush Sachdeva, while chief financial officer Manohar Charan will head the people and culture department.

This comes weeks after ShareChat launched its first AI centre of excellence in Southeast Asia in Singapore to enhance its AI model and develop ML models. This is ShareChat’s third AI facility outside India, after the US and the UK.

Shuffling its top deck, the startup also recently roped in former TikTok executive Nitin Jain as its new chief technology officer (CTO) to lead the development of technology and applications at ShareChat and its short video app Moj. 

In October last year, the company’s parent entity launched a social media app ‘Vibely’ to connect with new users. It also raised $65 Mn in debt funding from EDBI, Lightspeed, Temasek, Alkeon Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, HarbourVest amid a funding crunch last year. ShareChat raised these funds by issuing convertible debentures.

While all these developments hint towards ShareChat’s expansion efforts, the startup also showed pink slips to more than 40 employees in 2024, citing poor performance.

In 2023, ShareChat fired more than 700 employees across two layoff rounds.

Editor’s note: The story has been edited to add ShareChat’s statement.