 Hello and welcome to Ifurem Talk Show. Our guest today is Udit Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer, share chat. Welcome to the show's group. Thanks Kanchana, thanks Ifurem for having me for this discussion. Udit's share chat always remains in the news for right or wrong reasons. How do you, how does it feel, you know, being at the hem of India's largest homegrown social media platform? Kenjin, actually, I would think anything that's worth the news will always remain in use for right or wrong reasons. But, you know, just to answer your question, it's really super exciting times for a platform like share chat and modge, right? What we are seeing is there are two underlying currents in our society right now, right? One is the emergence of new internet users in tier two, tier three towns of this country. These are people who are coming into internet for the very first time and not so hell bent on actually using English as the preferred language, right? They are more comfortable using their own mother tongue, but they definitely want to take full advantage of what internet has to offer. So that's one underlying current that we are seeing right now. And thankfully, share chat is rightly placed to sort of tap into that behavior and take advantage of that and be able to offer a platform that actually speaks the language that people are comfortable in. And that's why, you know, 160 million people are actually coming onto the platform month after month and engaging with it. On the other side, you know, the second thing that's happening is the emergence of short form video, right? So report after report, you know, you will see so many industry reports coming out these days talking about how the younger population of this country for the, I don't know if it's a good thing, but the attention span has actually gone down significantly, right? Depending on which report you're reading, it's running into a few seconds now, right? They claim that it's gone down to like 10 to 12 seconds. What is happening because of that is people actually have higher propensity to spend time on platforms which can give them very engaging, authentic short form video content, right? And that's something that MoJ is really at the forefront of. And that's why, you know, from both share chat and MoJ perspective, I feel totally privileged to be actually part of an ecosystem, which is tapping into those two sort of emerging consumer behaviors in the country right now. Yeah, we're going to complete one year soon, right, at share chat. So if I ask about your major challenges and achievements so far. So, you know, when I prior to this, I was actually in the OTT world, which was a lot more organized, well established, right? I think advertisers, agencies over the last five, six years, they have started understanding the value that that OTT platforms bring to the table. Short form video is still an emerging narrative in our country, right? And that was one of the things that got me excited in first place about joining share chat and MoJ. So for me, I think one of the biggest challenges has been to actually go out in the market and talk to marketeers, brand managers, category managers, industry leaders and help them understand the power of short form video in our country today, right? So that has been a big challenge and that has been the most exciting part as well. Similarly, you would actually hear a lot of brands talking about, you know, how tier two, tier three markets are the next big growth opportunities for them. And for us, because a big chunk of our share chat audiences are actually coming from those cities, those towns, again, talking to the same advertisers and telling them that, hey, if you're looking to, you know, talk about a coconut oil in tier two, tier three town, then you need to be working with us and you need to be understanding the nuances of, you know, what kind of content those people are watching, what gets them excited? What are they interested in? Bring about the contextual nature, right? Bring about the fact that they are actually celebrating a Chhat Pooja or they're celebrating a Ram Navmi, right? Talk about those festivals. So bringing in those nuances and working with brands, I think those have been the more interesting challenges that I have seen. In terms of achievements, you know, we actually just clocked our largest ever revenue month in the history of share chat and watch. So that's something that any revenue leader will take a lot of pride in. But, you know, just moving beyond numbers, establishing a well oiled sales machinery has been something that I've worked on for the last nine months or so that I've been here at share chat. So now we have a very seasoned group of sales folks who are who are basically, you know, taking the share chat and moj narrative out in the market. So I would consider that as as one of the big achievements apart from, you know, some of the revenue goals that we have hit in the in the last few months. Yeah, congratulations on on your revenue, you know, achievements. But I would like you to share, you know, that achievement. I mean, in detail, I mean, what was the revenue and for which month you are talking about for our audience. And number two, I mean, you mentioned about tier two and tier three cities. So are you also going to focus Metro cities, urban urban area in your next phase of growth? Sure. To answer your first question, March was actually that month. So so very recent. And just to just to put in the context, in March, we actually did two x of what we actually did in June of 22. So you can imagine the growth that we have seen, right? As for your other question about what about Metro is what about tier one? So I want to actually call this out right a lot of times, because we have done I would think that we have done a pretty good job of establishing share chat as the market leader in tier two and tier three, people actually tend to forget that tier one in India itself is sort of subdivided into several categories, right? So even in tier one, in absolute terms, if you were to look at the traffic that we go that we get from tier one and share chat, that's about a good 40 45 odd million people every month, right? And this is something that we are again going and and talking to a lot of advertisers about that. Hey, you know, as long as you're thinking of vernaculars, as long as you're thinking of talking to people in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Punjabi, don't just think of this as a tier two, tier three play, you have to think of this as a tier one play as well, right? Because there's a sizable population in tier one towns in metros, that's actually more comfortable using their native language. And in order for you to reach out to them, share chat is a is a tremendous platform for for doing that. So that's why tier one narrative from a share chat perspective is also quite strong. And moj by the way is a totally different story, right? Moj is a more Gen Z platform, which even today gets 45% of the overall traffic from tier one. So so pretty sizable traffic actually comes on the platform from tier one itself. You know, if I talk about the short video market segment. So I think we have got a lot many players and the the the fight could be tough because you know, after the entry of global players, I mean, launch their Instagram, maybe YouTube short. So they are also, you know, maybe eating up into into the space. So how challenging is to sustain in this market? And I'm personally a strong believer of, you know, the fact that the more the competition is, the better it is. In general, for the for the overall ecosystem, right? Today, while we at Moj are at the forefront of you know, what we want to do from a short form video perspective, it's great to have some of our other peers actually now starting to talk about short form video a little more seriously, because ultimately, what we do, what we do want advertisers to realize is that they need to figure out a way of communicating their story in a shorter span. Right? If audiences in this country are actually consuming content, that's 15 to 20 seconds long. It's very tough or it's going to be very tough for a brand to actually be able to engage with the same audience by showing them a 60 second creative, right? And for us at Moj and I assume the same applies for our peers who are trying to now push the short form narrative in the market. It's basically trying to make brands understand that you can actually tell your story within a shorter time frame. And in fact, you should try to do that because that's what the consumers are wanting today. Right? They want the they want the ads to be crisp. They want the ads to be more contextual. I talked about that earlier where you know, we are we are bringing in the finer nuances of a particular region or a particular language or a particular culture to it. And that's something that we do quite well. Right? So so while competition is good, we have also created our own niche. We know what our strengths are. And for us, you know, given everything that we do is from an Indian language perspective first, we understand the nuances of those. So even the creator ecosystem that we have built for share chat and Moj, that creator ecosystem also you would realize is somewhat different from what some of the other players would be doing. Right? And that creator ecosystem can actually add a lot of value to to any brand that's looking to talk to people in a mayorate in a bullen chair in a in a Udupi. Right? So so if you have to actually go to those towns and cities of the country, you will need to speak their language and who better to do it than the influencer who's actually sitting out there, right? And actually speaking the language understands the local culture. I would say not just local culture, but local micro culture, right? Because every town and city as you would also agree in a country like ours, the culture shifts, right? Like as they say, like in south every 100 kilometers that the taste of summer changes, right? Similarly, culture also changes in our in our country. So every pocket has a micro culture and a platform like like ours understands that micro culture really quite well. And that sort of helps us uniquely differentiate our platform from everything else that's out there. With how many advertisers are you currently working with? So in the period of if you were to just take the second half of last year, so I'm talking from July to December, we had close to actually we had 200 plus advertisers who actually work with us on mod itself. And if I were to take that number, if I were to add share chat to it, that number will go upwards of 350. So we have a sizable chunk of advertisers who are actually working very closely, very regularly with us. The more interesting thing, Kanchan, is that these are not just one of associations that we have with advertisers, quite a few of our advertisers are actually doing repeat business with us. They are they're very consistent on the platform, you would actually see the likes of Pepsi, Coke, Amazon, right, all these advertisers we work very closely with. The other interesting thing is that we work with advertisers from across industry verticals, right? A lot of people have asked me this question earlier that hey, is your platform suitable for only new age advertisers? Is it suitable for startups? Is it suitable for tech companies? Is it suitable for FMCG? And what's truly astonishing is that we are not really limited to one or two verticals. But organizations from across different industry verticals are actually working very closely with us. They figured out their own unique ways of working with us. In fact, the strength of the platform also lies in the in the fact that we don't offer just vanilla video display sort of options. Given that we are an India based organization, so we can actually do a lot more innovation around our ad units. And that's why we are able to offer a whole wide range of options to advertisers. And depending on, you know, what your campaign objective is, what your industry is, what kind of innovation you're looking for, what kind of TG you're going after, we can actually do a lot of customization in the plans that we make for for brands. And that's why you would see that advertisers from across verticals from FMCG to handsets to e-commerce players, fintech, all verticals you would actually see live on the platform in some shape or form. This is really interesting. And I mainly asked this question because advertising market has not been so good globally. So how has been the ad market for you, you know, over the past one year in terms of revenue? And what are your expectations for the current fiscal? So, look, it is true, there have been definitely headwinds, right? I think across the board, due to macro factors, advertisers have definitely, they're definitely re-evaluating their budgets and they're trying to figure what is the best ROI that that they can generate from their ad dollars. The good thing about platforms like ours is that, given the fact that we are actually able to make a material difference, and we are actually able to deliver better ROIs. So we continue to be present in the marketing plans of almost all the advertisers that we work with. And that's exactly the reason why we have actually managed to do what we have managed to do in the last year, right? Growing our revenues almost two X of where we were in June of 22, over a period of six months, that sort of a testament to how the platform is actually able to deliver for for advertisers across categories, right? So I'm not completely writing off the headwinds that we have. But at the same time, all the work that's going on on the product on the platform, you know, that has really helped us to actually not only continue to engage with the existing set of advertisers, but actually unlock a lot of new advertisers on the platform as well. And, you know, as far as the current year is concerned, we definitely see a huge upside for us. I think some good groundwork has been done in the last last few months. We have actually done long term deals with quite a few advertisers. And that sort of gives us the confidence that we would be able to go further higher up in terms of our revenue trajectory in the next six months. Would you like to name those advertisers with whom you done the long term deal? Sorry, I'm not at liberty to actually talk about the names tension. No problem. Yeah, yeah. How has been the response, you know, after Mojen, Max Takatak merger? I think that merger was the largest in the history of, you know, happened. Sorry, can you hear me? Yeah, I think maybe there's a little bit of a lag, but I heard your question content. Your question was around the Moj Takatak merger, right? I think what that merger has done is, obviously, it was one of the largest mergers probably in the history of, you know, mergers that have happened in the social media space. What it did, did was it actually sort of consolidated the viewer base that was going after short form video on one platform, right? So for us, I think it was a pretty positive move to be able to now become the undisputed leader in the short form video space, right? That's exactly what that merger has essentially delivered for us. Okay, now my last question. I mean, what are your plans for expansion, you know, in terms of staff, in terms of new features, and maybe new acquisitions? So, new acquisitions, I would leave to our CFO to answer that question, but I can talk to you about how we are looking at expansion in general from a revenue perspective. Look, I think one thing is very clear to us that while we continue to work with the larger advertisers in this country and continue to scale business on that side, we are also very serious about expanding our footprint in terms of the number of advertisers that we want to bring on board because we do believe, like I said, given the wide range of options that are available on the platform and given our ability to actually deliver for the smallest of budgets to the largest of budgets, we don't want any advertiser to be left out of our sort of ecosystem. And that's why one of the big focus areas for us this year is to essentially expand our footprint in what we call as the mid market segment, right? So we are essentially going after SMBs as well. So SMBs as well as these would be the mid tier sort of advertisers, right? So there is there's a top 200 advertisers that that we work very closely with. Now we are actually this year focused on expanding that base to the next 2000 advertisers. And of course, we continue to cater to the SMBs as well, because we have a sales of platform through which a lot of small advertisers, you know, proper partnerships, those sort of organizations are actually able to run campaigns on on board share chat and watch. So so that is one primary thing that we are we're looking to do this year. Apart from that, you know, one of the other big differentiators for us is our ability to work with the influencer creator community that we have and be able to do very interesting hashtag challenges, influencer activations, right? That's something that again is is is you know, unique to our platform. And that's something that we also want to scale further. So I think last year was sort of a PMF establishment for us. Now now that we have actually done it and now that we have advertisers who have trust in our ability to actually deliver ROI on those campaigns, we are now trying to scale up the entire content revenue stream for us as well. So I would say that you know, those are the two sort of big streams that we would be working working on in in this in the current year. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking time out and speaking with you for him. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really nice talking to you. Yeah.