The latest in a list of firms that have benefited from the sudden growth in the media industry thanks to Covid 19- news aggregator Inshorts, has announced that it has raised a sum of $60 million in a round of funding led by global tech investment agency Vy Capital.
This means that Inshorts Pte Ltd. now has aggregated a sum of $140 million over the past year, from a number of financing giants. Its previous investors include Tiger Global Management, Addition (which is backed by Lee Fixel), A91 Partners, and SIG. These agencies have put their money in Inshorts proper, as well as its location-based social networking wing Public.
While the startup has not disclosed its exact valuation as of now, it is expected that it sits at just over $500 million. Co-founder and CEO at Inshorts and Public (a location based social media plaform operated by InShorts), Azhar Iqubal, expressed his excitement over the fundraiser, saying, “The world is changing every minute, and each one of us has an inherent desire to remain updated about these changes. Both Inshorts app and Public app are aimed at helping some of these people in their quest of keeping themselves informed, and we are thrilled to have Vy Capital join us in our journey.”
This latest deal comes after Public raised ₹300 crore ($41.3 million) from a fundraiser led by A91 Partners in March, following another deal worth ₹260 crore (around $35 million) last year, which was led by Addition.
The eight-year old startup is well-known in India for providing short doses of news in the form of 60 word-long snippets, and is especially popular among the metropolitan populations (who don’t have much time to indulge in reading full-fledged articles).
Public, on the other hand, is a social media app with prime focus on tier-2, 3 and 4 cities, and was launched in April 2019. It has amassed some 114 million downloads in the past 15 months.
Competitor Dailyhunt also took in funds worth $200 million through two back-to-back rounds in December 2020 and February 2021.
Meanwhile, Vy Capital too, have expressed their hopes for the partnership, through partner Vamsi Duvvuri, who said, “We are excited to partner with Azhar and team in their journey to build one of the largest content platforms out of India, running two market-leading properties with a rapidly growing user base. We look forward to working closely with the company and the team as it enters the next phase of scaling.”
