Indian social media company ShareChat raised $502 million from big-name investors, cash it plans to use to pursue its aim of reaching more than 1 billion users a month with its portfolio of apps.

The company, which runs social media platform ShareChat and short form video app Moj in its home market, announced investment companies Tiger Global and Lightspeed were among its latest backers, alongside US peers Twitter and Snap.

In a blog, CEO and co-founder Ankush Sachdeva noted the stakes sold valued the business at $2.1 billion.

Its primary platform, ShareChat, launched in 2015 and provides content in 15 languages spoken in India. Sachdeva claimed monthly active users (MAUs) of 160 million and the tag of the country’s “largest regional social media platform”.

The company created short-form video app Moj in late June 2020, stating it scaled to 120 million MAUs within nine months. The executive noted this second offering was made in response to “a lot of short-video apps exiting the market”.

It launched shortly after India began banning high-profile apps with links to China including TikTok.

ShareChat’s platforms use AI to tailor content feeds and, with its new funding, the company aims to “build India’s largest AI-powered content ecosystem”.

Sachdeva added: “We are at a significant inflection point in our company’s journey, as the internet penetration further deepens in India we are well-positioned to expand our ecosystem of products to 1 billion-plus MAUs cumulatively.”

“We have seen how large the short-video market is in China, with around 80 per cent of the entire internet population using one of the short-video products daily.”