India, April 13 -- It takes years of experience of navigating through waves of market trends, economic cycles, investor scrutiny, pivots and P&L maths before a founder admits that somewhere things went wrong, as ShareChat cofounder and CFO Manohar Charan says today. 

"We tried the replacement angle. And finally realised that network effects were too strong. Comparing our scale, capital and tech to Silicon Valley giants is like comparing chalk and cheese. You can't take Meta or Google head on. You can't say I'll do the same thing and beat you at it," Charan told Inc42 in a recent chat. 

One of the earliest contenders from India looking to create a homegrown social media platform, it's been more than a decade since ShareChat eme...