To Get The Next Billion Users Online, You Have To Culturally Understand Them

Virendra Gupta, Founder & CEO of Dailyhunt, who was awarded the exchange4mediaInfluencer of the Year award for his pioneering efforts to build a local language content platform on mobile, talks about the company’s aim to grow its user base to 250 million by June 2019, giving the tech giants Facebook and Google a “run for their money”, as well as investing in adtech to build a platform that benefits advertisers.

- Venkata Susmita Biswas

Home-grown news aggregator mobile app Dailyhunt could soon become the content platform that will challenge the duopoly of Facebook and Google in India. At the moment, 157 million people, or 30% of India’s Internet population, use Dailyhunt on a monthly basis. Here are excerpts from a conversation with Virendra Gupta, Founder & CEO of Dailyhunt:

Q] What was your vision for Dailyhunt when you launched the company and how has that vision evolved over the years?

The core vision of Dailyhunt has remained the same throughout the life of the company. When we started, the core vision was to bridge the digital divide in Bharat. So our first offering was to give local language news to people on the mobile phone. As you know, India is primarily a local language market. So our main aim was to bring local language news content online and help people who come online for the first time on mobile. Over time as the market has evolved, so have we. We have a broader vision and mission now to become the local language platform which empowers a billion Indians to discover, consume and socialise content that enriches, informs and entertains them.

Q] You say that the mission now is to become a local language platform that empowers a billion Indians. What are the steps you have been taking to reach the billion Indians residing in Bharat?