The app of the Bengaluru-based company has been downloaded over 40 million times in more than 180 districts and is available in six languages.
Lokal, a hyperlocal content platform, has recently secured Rs 120 crore in funding from Global Brain Corporation and Sony Innovation Fund at an undisclosed valuation. The funding will be utilized to accelerate the company’s growth. With this latest investment, the company has now raised a total of Rs 225 crore. The platform integrates content, community, and classifieds in hyperlocal settings. Lokal was founded in 2010 by Jani Pasha and Vipul Chaudhary, and it raised almost $3 million the following year. In 2021, the company raised an additional $12 million.
The app of Lokal, a Bengaluru-based hyperlocal content platform, has been downloaded over 40 million times in more than 180 districts. It is accessible in six different languages.
Jani Pasha graduated with an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur in 2013. The story behind how he and Vipul Chaudhary, an IIT post-graduate engineer, built the company is quite interesting.
In 2017, the two friends built a news aggregator platform called The Soup, but it failed due to a lack of market research. They then shifted their focus towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns and launched the platform called Lokal, which proved to be successful.
The founders discovered that people in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns were looking for real-time news in their local language, as the traditional newspaper format provided outdated news. This gave them the idea to create a platform that offered hyperlocal news in an instant format, which eventually became Lokal.
In addition to news, Lokal also provides various services such as classifieds, advertisements, jobs, and more.
Initially, Lokal was not an app. In February 2018, the founders hired a stringer in Telangana’s Kodad district and started distributing local news through a WhatsApp group. The group gained popularity quickly and grew rapidly, as Jani Pasha mentioned in an old interview with Your Story.
After the successful implementation of local news distribution, the founders added additional features such as matrimonials and job listings. These features were also well-received by the users.
The company later introduced an auto-moderation feature to their platform, which helped automate a significant portion of its content moderation process.
Lokal later added another feature of auto-moderation, which enabled most of their content to be moderated automatically.
Lokal has a user-friendly feed that displays the latest news and also features real estate listings for users.
The company has been expanding its team by bringing in several industry leaders to strengthen its workforce.
The company has a presence in several Indian states including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.
According to Lokal, 70% of their users are people between the ages of 18 to 25 who are either employed or have a college degree. The remaining 30% are business owners.
