समाचार Samāchār · Startups · 11 November 2026

ShareChat crosses ₹1,000 crore. Live video and microdramas now pay the bills

Mohalla Tech’s revenue rose about 40% to ₹1,016 crore in FY26. Advertising shrank. Livestreaming and Quick TV subscriptions carried the year, while the loss depends on what you count.

ShareChat has crossed ₹1,000 crore in revenue. Its parent Mohalla Tech earned ₹1,016 crore from operations in FY26, up about 40% from ₹723 crore a year earlier, according to its annual results as reported by Entrackr and Inc42 on 10 November. The bigger change is where the money now comes from. Advertising is no longer the engine.

Livestreaming led. Entrackr reports about ₹471 crore from Chatroom, ShareChat’s live video product, up about 9% and close to half of all revenue. Subscriptions to Quick TV, the company’s microdrama app, brought in about ₹293 crore. Advertising fell 13% to about ₹252 crore. Spending to win users rose sharply. Business development expenses grew roughly eightfold to about ₹335 crore, both outlets report.

The bottom line depends on what is counted. Inc42 reports a consolidated net loss of ₹1,978 crore, up 79%, and says management attributed it largely to non-cash and notional items: interest provisions on hybrid debt, unrealised foreign exchange losses and ESOP costs. Entrackr puts the net loss at ₹672 crore, narrower than ₹796 crore in FY25. Both report share-based payment costs of about ₹739 crore, up from about ₹184 crore.

Why it matters. Paying users in Bharat are no longer a theory. A short drama in one’s own language sells subscriptions that a free feed never did, and live video turns creators into a business. That is consumption at the middle and bottom of the pyramid, built by an Indian company. Credit goes to the team that built a second engine when the first one slowed.

The test now is cash. Revenue growing 40% while acquisition spend rises eightfold must turn into operating profit before the next round of capital is needed. FY27 will show whether the new mix holds.

What a founder takes from it: Indian-language users will pay when the product is built and priced for them. That is the good news. The founder lesson is the other half: growth bought with acquisition spend and stock options has to show up as operating cash, and that is the line the market will read next.