Aditya Kothari, co-founder of Chingari, has announced his departure from the popular short-video platform amid ongoing changes in the industry. Kothari took to Twitter on Friday (May 12) to share the news with his followers.
In a series of tweets, Kothari expressed his gratitude for the journey he had with Chingari and its remarkable growth, reaching over 170 million users. However, he stated that it was time for him to pass on the torch and move on to new endeavors. While he didn’t disclose his future plans, Kothari expressed his openness to meeting startup founders as an investor or advisor to explore new ideas and possibilities.
Kothari described his time at Chingari as enriching in many ways and thanked his team, investors, partners, and the Chingari user community for their support throughout his tenure as co-founder.
Having previously co-founded various ventures such as Hey Leela, LogVisitor, and Spare Tickets, Kothari is a serial entrepreneur with a diverse background. Before Chingari, he also served as the business and strategy lead for EV startup Bounce.
Founded in 2018 by Kothari, Biswatma Nayak, Deepak Salvi, and Sumit Ghosh, Chingari emerged as one of the leading short-video platforms in India following the ban on TikTok. It operates as an on-chain social app, allowing users to create, browse, and share video content. Additionally, Chingari introduced its own crypto token called GARI, which gained support from actor Salman Khan.
However, the short-video app sector has been facing challenges recently. Most Indian short-video apps experienced a decline in daily active users and monthly downloads earlier this year compared to January 2021. Monetization difficulties and failed revenue-boosting experiments have burdened these platforms, further exacerbated by the ongoing funding crunch affecting the entire startup ecosystem.
Chingari itself faced allegations of inflating video view counts and using dark patterns to attract users. The performance of Chingari’s crypto token, GARI, has also been disappointing, with a significant drop in value since July 2022.
Kothari’s departure aligns with a trend of Indian co-founders stepping down from their startups. In recent months, Teachmint’s CTO Anshuman Kumar, DailyRounds’ co-founder Deepu Sebin, ShareChat’s co-founders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, and Zomato’s CTO Gunjan Patidar have all announced their exits from their respective companies.
As the short-video industry continues to evolve, Chingari and its competitors face the challenge of finding sustainable monetization models and adapting to the changing landscape of user preferences and market dynamics.
