Nearcircles is a messaging app that lets people residing in the same neighbourhood engage in community-related discussions. Users can post questions, sell household items and search like-minded individuals via joining lifestyle groups in their local community areas.
Active in 3,200 neighborhoods in Singapore, Mumbai, and Jakarta, the startup has connected over 100,000 people who are involved in about hundreds of thousands of local discussions.
To penetrate further into the Indonesian market, it has secured $1 million in pre-series round to from Singapore-based IDN Financials. Since its launch there three weeks ago, Nearcircles has managed to sign up 20,000 fresh users across 825 neighborhoods. But it has been coming across various obstacles such as setting up a team, carrying swift and seamless operations in the new geography simultaneously marketing the app. Co-founder Suresh Mylavarapu told Tech In Asia,
The funds will be primarily utilized for team expansion in Indonesia, mainly in Jakarta for a year’s timeframe.
He says the users in Indonesia are even discussing upcoming elections in the app. He adds,
Local parties and the election board are creating their official accounts on Nearcircles for sharing updates with Jakarta residents.
Through its platform, Nearcircles aims to connect neighbors and members of geographically bounded communities with each other. Apart from participating in the general discussions of the area, forming groups, people can even create events with their neighbors.
Nearcircles believe existing social platforms allow people to connect with the world, but not the surroundings. There have been few apps in the hyperlocal space but predominantly in the dating side. They wish to function as a hyperlocal social networking and deals platform.
They feel they stand out by three prominent features. One, they enable geo-tagging to neighbourhoods, neighbourhood switching between cities for travellers and, encourage users to interact within their own neighbourhood with their real neighbours during registration.
