New Delhi, May 21, 2019: Leading investment firms – Hyderabad Angels (HA), Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Anthill Ventures jointly invested an undisclosed amount in vernacular hyperlocal news platform PubliVibe. IAN investors Bikky Khosla (Board of Director) and Prashant Pahade (lead investor) led the funding round and also joined PublicVibe’s board.
Established in the year 2015, the Hyderabad-based start-up is dedicated to serving instant, personalized and verified hyperlocal to international news in vernacular languages through its AI-driven platform. The start-up will leverage the capital infusion to scale in one of the vernacular languages and to optimize its AI technological infrastructure to build vernacular hyperlocal community news platform at scale.
Speaking on the announcement, Narasimha Reddy, Co-founder, PublicVibe, said, “Presently, there are over 70,000 national and regional news publishers in India and yet only 2-3% of local news and 0.05% of instant local news is being covered of the total volume. But people are as much interested—perhaps even more so—in knowing about what’s happening around them in their immediate locality than on a global arena.”
Co-founded by Narasimha Reddy Veeram Reddy, Bhaskar Konda and Sridhar Bandlamudi, PublicVibe is a mobile-first company. It is currently serving more than 6 million users in South India through its Android, iOS and web applications. PublicVibe sources its content from popular publishers, public, ground level reporters, journalists and the Government. In addition to its news content delivery, the AI-driven platform is also set to launch a hyperlocal advertisement network in the future to support small businesses in connecting with potential consumers in the neighbourhood.
Speaking on the investment, Ram Chaitanya Reddy, Chairman of Hyderabad Angels, said, “Being in Hyderabad, we would like to Identify, Invest and support local companies from this city. Public vibe a start-up from Hyderabad, a hyperlocal community news platform, is doing a commendable job by collaborating with people and local governments for instant local news. This is more relevant than global news at times. It touches and impacts daily activities by brining resolution to local problems quickly.”
On the back of its disruptive services, PublicVibe has also been recognized as one of the top 10 start-ups in India by Nasscom and Facebook as part of their ‘Code For the Next Billion’ social impact program. The start-up is also associated with leading digital platforms including Jio Browser, AppBrowser, Micromax, and Venus Browser, among others, as their news content partner. As a provider of content solutions related to market research and market intelligence, PublicVibe also works in conjunction with organizations like Mahindra & Mahindra.