How consumer brands are riding on ShareChat for ‘Destination Bharat’

Backed by Twitter, ShareChat is one of India’s leading regional language social networking platforms. ShareChat has now emerged with renewed vigour to take over the ecosystem and solidify its presence. As the largest Indian social media platform, ShareChat allows users to share their opinions, record their lives and make new friends – all within the comfort of their native language. Spearheading India’s Internet revolution, ShareChat is changing the way in which the next billion users will interact on the Internet.

Also read:  ShareChat sets up ShareChat Labs in Silicon Valley

In this interaction with Adgully, Satyajit Deb Roy, Director - Sales, ShareChat, speaks about the growth and journey of the platform, advertiser response during the festive season, growing traction of regional languages in social media and more. 

How has ShareChat’s journey been in India and what is the demography of its users?

Back in 2015, India had never seen a social media platform of its own. There were social media platforms existing, but all of them were in English and were complicated. Indian Internet users hailing from Tier 2 and 3 cities found it tough to be expressive in English and also connect culturally. There was a content vacuum in the regional language space and ShareChat was created in order to address that need.

Since ShareChat is an Indic language social media platform, the platform was the first social media platform to understand the need for Indic languages among the language-first Internet users. Therefore, we witnessed most of our traffic originating from Tier 2 cities and further, however, lately there has been a significant increase in user base from metros and Tier 1 cities as well. This highlights the fact that language-first Internet users are emerging across the country, though it is more dominant in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities.

India needed a platform to express itself in its own language and only, ShareChat managed to address that vacuum. Our platform is spearheading India’s Internet revolution, ShareChat is changing the way in which the next billion users will interact on the Internet. 

What kind of content do your consumers consume on the platform and how is this content curated?

We believe in driving meaningful conversations for our community of users and give them a never-before social experience on ShareChat. ShareChat is the only social media platform that offers unparalleled reach among language-first Internet audiences, where users can express themselves in their native language without the fear of being judged.

ShareChat has enabled the platform for thousands of micro-influencers to work closely with brands and create unique brand experiences through UGC (User Generated Content). The micro-influencer led strategy drives word of mouth like messaging for brands making brands more connected to its audiences.

Romance, Wishes and Entertainment are the most trending subjects across all languages. With most of our users are in the 18-25 years age group, it seems to be a normal consumption habit. However, with the pandemic forcing people to stay indoors, we witnessed a considerable growth in the Health and News genres too. 

Today, branding is huge on every digital platform, how have you strategised or leveraged your advertisers and the brands on the ShareChat platform?

ShareChat, with its growing reach and understanding of the Indic language community of users, is a unique platform with the ability to deliver reach, coupled with engagement to brands and advertisers. Our intention is to connect the brands with their relevant audience at every possible touchpoint and make their audiences aware and informed about the brand’s propositions.

ShareChat brings in unique capabilities with delivering reach to the advertisers and brands, along with engagement.

We have built a robust ad-tech platform to help the brands reach scale, with native advertising in video and banner assets, and drive impact through the homepage pinned post, customised for every brand, which gets visible to the targeted users as the first post on their homepage.

Our expertise in brand engagement has already developed immense confidence from the marketers’ community and every consumer-focussed brand is partnering with us to gain a strategic advantage beyond English-speaking Internet audiences, in their native language.

This year, ShareChat has already partnered with over 150 brands across India for multiple campaigns across diverse market segments and worked with the likes of Facebook, Coca-Cola, Oyo, MTR, Airtel, Pepsi, Future Group, MXPlayer, FlipKart and many more. 

What are the monetisation plans and which verticals are you focusing on presently?

Monetisation is a broad term. We are currently focused on driving advertising with brands. It’s just been a year, and the journey has just begun. And we’ve already seen a very favourable response from the industry.

With ShareChat’s scale and reach among native language speaking population, it has become an interesting platform for brands to explore. We have been actively working with some of the brands and agencies to get a conversation going around regional social media users on the ShareChat platform.

With increasing opportunities and demand, we have been able to deliver ad solutions in industries like e-commerce, consumer durables, FMCG, telecom, fashion, jewellery, home decor gaming, automotive and many more verticals. We are expanding our partnerships within these sectors and will continue to bolster our advertising efforts in the coming future. 

What are your offerings to your advertisers during the festive season?

India, being a diverse country, celebrates every festival driven by communities and geographies. However, the entire nation unites during the festive season. After a prolonged phase of uncertainty, the festive season is ushering in positivity and hope and ShareChat is celebrating this positivity and renewed hope, as reflected by its users.

ShareChat, being a mirror to India’s cultural diversity, witnessed a similar trend on the platform. This unique proposition draws the attention of the advertisers and brands towards ShareChat to connect to their audience in their native languages.

For example, brands targeting the Bengali community through Durga Puja celebration, while Hindi speaking audiences can be reached out to during Navratri celebrations. A similar trend can be witnessed during Diwali and Kali Puja, or the harvesting festival known as Bihu, Baisakhi, Poila Baisakh, etc. There can be umpteen instances that highlight the diversified celebrations across the country.

Due to this, the advertisers find ShareChat really impactful because of its strength that exemplifies its capabilities to connect with the language-first audience in their native language. And, only ShareChat can manage to deliver this language strength to a brand at scale.

This festive season, we already have over 50 brands signing up with us for festive campaigns, and we hope to have over 50 more brands by the end of this festive season that ends with New Year celebrations. This also highlights immense confidence in people’s spending prosperity.