SUMMARY
- Lokal was developed by Vipul Chowdhury and Jani Pasha to bridge the digital divide in rural India in 2018.
- It began as a simple WhatsApp group for the small town of Kodad, before launching their app.
- Lokal provides local news, jobs, and classifieds to more than 900M non-English speaking users.
Rural Indians have been struggling with a major issue. They had to get local news in the next day’s paper, yet to a limited extent. In contrast, the people of the big city had instant access to all of the latest news. The digital divide was extreme. Just at this point, two software engineers, Vipul Chowdhury and Jani Pasha, identified the issue. They first attempted to create a news aggregator platform known as “The Soup”. Anyway, after five months of hard work, the project failed. Because they where failed to communicate with their target users and try to understand their needs.
This failure sparked the idea of “Lokal“. In February 2018, they started a WhatsApp group in Kodad, a small town in the Suryapet district of Telangana, to quickly provide hyperlocal information, such as daily updates gathered from local correspondents. The group began with only ten members and gained popularity very soon. Motivated by their success, they launched the “Lokal” Android app in May 2018. It was a simple, scrollable feed that allowed users to browse local news in their language. Within a year of the beginning, Lokal gained 5 lakh active users from all over 15 Telangana and Andhra Pradesh districts. Lokal has continuously added new features since then. The feature includes local employment ads, matrimonial ads, and classified ads.
Recently, Lokal secured INR 120 Cr in Series B funding from new investors Global Brain and Sony Innovation Fund, with participation from India Quotient and other existing investors. The startup is leveraging fresh funds to strengthen its technology teams and expand into new markets. With a total funding round of over INR 225+ Crore, the company has 110+ employees based in Bangalore.
In FY20, it had a rough start with a revenue of Rs 0.3 crore and suffered a massive loss of Rs 9.6 crore. They began developing in FY21, with revenue rising by 800% to Rs 2.7 crore and losses falling to Rs 5.9 crore. The profits rose 255% to Rs 9.6 crore, although losses widened to Rs 38.9 crore In FY22. By FY23, profits have notably doubled to Rs 20.1 crore, but losses have also reached Rs 52.6 crore. The value of this startup reached $57 million, showing the strong confidence of the entrepreneur supported by $44.2 million in funding. Currently, The financial details for 2024 are unclear at this time.
Lokal, India’s hyperlocal content, community, and classified platform, wanted to use the fresh funds to grow in existing markets, launch new categories and product capabilities, further strengthen the product and technology teams and fulfil their goal to create a platform that provides significant value to their users, but also to build it sustainably.
The secret to Lokal’s enormous success is its user-centric strategy. They use consumer feedback to continuously enhance the product. Through the integration of local languages and technology, they have developed an exclusive platform that prioritizes localization across every field. More than 180 districts across 8 states actively use Lokal today. There have been over 2 crore downloads and over 60 lakh active users each month.
