Demystifying the community of ShareChat - 180 million+ user base

One of the questions that we are often asked is, ‘Who is a ShareChat creator?’ And to be honest, it would be pretty hard to answer this question in a sentence or two. Rather, it would be a disservice to our creators to classify them into a generic segment. To understand our creators better, we would like to take you through the stories of some of our creators belonging to a diverse set of backgrounds and cultures from India. What’s more intriguing is to understand the nature and diversity of content created in different genres, which may differ from the kind of content we may consume. As we reflect on these narratives, it is heart-warming to observe how ShareChat has become an integral part of these creators’ everyday lives, and how these creators have become the heartbeat of ShareChat’s 180+ million strong monthly active users base. Our first story starts with Mubashira…

Mubashira, an English language graduate, has a fan following on ShareChat for her Malayalam stories.

Free fire, wishes, status, songs, celebrities — keywords in these categories tend to dominate the list of top 20 keyword content searches in Malayalam. But amongst this list, one particular search keyword stands out from the rest, ranking even above many famous personalities. This particular keyword “Mubashira” happens to be the username of an extremely popular ShareChat user, whose claim to fame is her original novels, updates to which she regularly posts on ShareChat.

Born into a family of modest means hailing from Malappuram, Kerala, Mubashira didn’t always wish to be an author. Her journey into becoming an author all started with a dream to pen down her thoughts one night. Those scribbles laid the foundation of her first novel ‘Neeyilla Jeevitham’.

Initially, she used to upload her writings into a WhatsApp group for stories. A suggestion from one of her friends who saw other users posting novels on ShareChat, eventually led her to join the social media platform. While she initially just used ShareChat to pen down her thoughts, feedback from users motivated her to keep on writing on the platform. Three years later, with over 4 novels (posted exclusively on ShareChat), 500+ posts, and 140k followers, she has not looked back! There have been several fans who have travelled from far away to meet Mubashira in person.

Kritika, stay at home mother, writes Shayari and emotional poetry in Hindi

Kritika is a stay at home mother who loves writing Shayari and emotional poetry. She promptly pens down her thoughts and creates posts whenever she has free time. She began exploring ShareChat after the TikTok ban and found her niche in making posts with Shayari and inspirational quotes. Over time, she learnt to use the GBoard transliteration feature instead of typing in Hindi. If the content is ready, she proudly claims to create as many as 50 posts a day. When she is not creating content, she enjoys reading Shayari and poetry posted by other creators and looks for novel ideas and formats of status posts. She is very passionate about her work and adapts her content when the engagement on her posts is low. She currently has 21K followers on ShareChat.

Isayan Surya, a visually impaired Tamil music composer, discovered first on ShareChat Isayan Surya became the first visually impaired music composer in South India, after having signed a contract with a music production company, post his discovery on ShareChat. He and another creator, ‘HipHop Kiran’ ( also spotted on ShareChat), came together to form an 8-member band ‘Peiyum Kuyil’ and launched a classical album, ‘Kannadi Bommaikal’ this year, on Independence Day. ShareChat has supported the band with the entire production of their album.

Isayan Suriya shares details about his journey “Being visually impaired and belonging to a humble background, I had been struggling for 5 years to compose my musical creation. However, with ShareChat, things started moving upwards and it helped us bring a group of crazy music enthusiasts together. It provided a perfect foundation to grow collectively as well as in our individual lives as musical artists.”

Suraj, a young medical student, creates lyrical status videos

Our last story is about Suraj, a 19-year old studying medicine who hails from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. His association with ShareChat goes back almost 4+ years. After ShareChat launched its creator portal and developed the original creator badges, he felt motivated to create even more content to get the original creator Golden badge. To fulfil this ambition, he took help from a friend, who taught him different techniques for creating content.

Soon, he began his journey as an established lyrical video status creator, and started creating content on trending themes and topics. The video link below highlights a beautiful lyrical video content created by Suraj, with Bollywood singer Arijit Singh’s song running in the background, along with floating song lyrics, transitioning in every video frame. Such videos form a popular content category and users love to share them on WhatsApp & add them as status videos.

We are proud of what the creator community has been able to achieve on ShareChat! Getting to know about their lives and their experiences help us develop creator empathy. Creators also inspire us to build better product experiences that empower them to express themselves in the comfort of their native languages.

WRITTEN BY Tejas Singh, Devyani Jain, Shivani Nayaka, Rishabh Dsouza and Anish Pratik Yayavaram

Cover illustration by Ritesh Waingankar