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Investors have a punt as online news goes hyperlocal
Business Standard
|February 23, 2023
News doesn't interest investors but hyperlocal news apps do
Azhar Iqubal is grappling with a problem. The cofounder and chief executive of Inshorts is trying to improve the quality of the 50,000 videos Public, Inshorts' short video news app, gets daily.
Unlike Inshorts, which aggregates news from various sources in 60-word bytes, Public is literally a public news app. A ward representative, local politician, resident, student, housewife, anyone can upload a video of up to a minute on local happenings.
It could be about a fight over water, a wedding, or a store opening, or any of the other myriad such things.
Since its 2019 launch, Public has gathered 60,000 creators from every district in India. It brings 80 per cent of Inshorts' 80 million unique users. However, most of it ₹150 crore revenue in the financial year ended March 2022 came from Inshorts. If the company has to monetise Public's audience, it has to improve the quality of the videos on offer.
Way2News, another hyperlocal news brand, gets 7,000 to 8,000 stories a day and has 7 million monthly active users. Eighty of its 300 people are part of the editorial team. Way2News claims that it is profitable on its revenue of ₹27 crore in 2021-22.
Business models in this segment are hazy, profits seem far away for most. But investors see something in hyperlocal apps.
Public raised ₹300 crore in March 2021 from A91 Partners and a bunch of existing (undisclosed) investors at a valuation of $250 million (₹1,800 crore).
That is at twice the valuation of its last round of fundraising in September 2020 when it raised ₹260 crore from SIG and Tanglin Venture.
Way2News raised ₹129 crore from WestBridge Capital and venture capitalist Sashi Reddi in June 2022 as Series A funding.
The earlier rounds of funding came from its parent company, Way2Online, an eight-year-old internet tech firm.
This story is from the February 23, 2023 edition of Business Standard.
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