Sharechat acquires hyperlocal information platform which was started by its former employee

Home-grown regional language social media app ShareChat on Monday announced it has acquired Circle Internet, a hyperlocal information platform, for an undisclosed sum.

With the acquisition, the existing 15-member Circle Internet team has joined ShareChat.

"The acquisition will help us penetrate deeper into geographies and nurture a thriving hyperlocal content ecosystem that will understand and serve the latent content needs of, the next billion internet users more effectively," Manohar Charan, Vice President - Corporate Development and Strategic Finance, ShareChat, said in a statement.

"Circle App will continue to grow independently and empower our users to post more relevant and contextual content on the platform."

Circle was founded in 2018 by three IIT-ians Uchit Kumar, Gaurav Agrawal, and Shashank Shekhar and was backed by SAIF Partners and Venture Highway.

It provides locally relevant information to Indian language Internet users across tier-2 and tier-3 cities, and currently has a presence in more than 120 districts across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Kerala.

The platform brings a network of over 1,000 volunteers to contribute towards the hyperlocal content ecosystem.

"Circle was started with a vision to provide trustworthy locally relevant information to Indian language internet users," said Shekhar, CEO and Cofounder, Circle.

"The platform evolved as an invisible thread to bridge the gaps in content being made available to non-english speaking internet users, through relevant and contextual hyperlocal content."

Shekhar was heading content operations at ShareChat before he started Circle.

In his new avatar, he will be heading the overall content strategy for ShareChat which has has over 130 million monthly active users, and available across 15 Indic languages.