Microsoft to Invest 100 Million dollor in Desi App ShareChat

According to reports, Microsoft is in talks with Indian social media platform ShareChat for an investment of around $100 million. Sources say if the deal happens then Microsoft's investment will be a third of what ShareChat was looking forward to raising in its latest funding.

However, another source said we might expect Sharechat to raise funds from present investors before finalising deals with new ones. This deal with Microsoft might take some time to materialise the agreement, and the talks are in very early stages.

At present Microsoft is negotiating the purchase of TikTok's operations in the US and a few other markets from Chinese company ByteDance and reports say that Microsoft might also be planning to acquire TikTok's India market and the European market.

The news about Microsoft looking into the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations of TikTok are confirmed, reports about the Indian and the European markets are reported to be at an initial stage.

As per the Financial Times report if Microsoft's deal does not work out, then ByteDance may have to sell the India business to other foreign investors or Indian buyers.  Microsoft's interest in ShareChat while negotiations with TikTok/ByteDance are still going on is more attention-grabbing since ShareChat has a TikTok rival as well. ShareChat's Moj, a video-sharing service, was launched just a day after the Indian government banned TikTok in India. ByteDance's Helo also competes with ShareChat. But yet neither Microsoft nor ShareChat have commented on this.