Think Lokal, Act Local

Lokal's verticalised approach to deliver online services in native languages sets it apart from the race to become India's super-app

- BY PAYAL GANGULY

The journey of regional social media and services platform Lokal since 2018 is reflective of India's internet journey beyond the metros. Incorporated in 2018, Lokal has grown from being an Indic-language hyperlocal content and information app, to running classifieds and now launching apps for services in different languages.

"The first stage of the internet is for low-commitment content consumption, followed by classifieds and connecting with each other, and as more investment goes into building infrastructure such as payment gateways etc, the internet becomes ubiquitous," says Jani Pasha, co-founder and CEO at Lokal.

The idea for Lokal started with making the internet accessible to people beyond metros in their own language. Pasha, hailing from Kodad in Telangana, and Vipul Chaudhary, who hails from Bhilwara in Rajasthan, were introduced through common friends while they were working for other companies.

"Back then, we believed that, with Jio, the internet will become ubiquitous. But the language barrier existed and the gateway to build that would be with content in native languages. And the gap that existed around the time was what was happening in the towns or locality of the user,” says Pasha, adding that this led them to build a hyperlocal social media app in native language to get to a critical density of users interacting with the platform on a daily basis.

Once the density was achieved, Lokal launched its classifieds services with jobs, matrimony and other offerings around 2021. Over the last two years, with the adoption of UPI, Lokal has verticalised its classified products and runs a bouquet of 53 apps across categories like social media, jobs, matrimony, agriculture consulting, astrology, edutainment content, wellness, career and finance in 10 different languages.