Bengaluru-based local video news provider Lokal has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Mumbai-based venture capital firm India Quotient. Freshly infused funds will help the startup to strengthen its team and expand its presence to other geographical regions.
Lokal was founded by Jani Pasha and Vishal Chaudhary in July 2018. It provides a platform to serve vernacular local news to its audience based on their location and their preferred local language. Currently, the startup is only active in the Surypeta district of Telangana.
The startup provides news with the help of its network of local journalists and qualified freelancers that submit the news on its platform to facilitate quicker news delivery.
Since the news is sourced from different journalists, the startup tries to curb the menace of fake news with the help of ‘Lokal Star’. The designated ‘Lokal Star’ is tasked with the duty to verify all the news items that need verification from a local government authority including police, elected politician, among other elected and designated government employee.
Talking about the investment, Jani Pasha, Co-Founder & CEO, Lokal, said, “Our investors have experience investing in leading vernacular platforms. They understand the user, which is a huge plus as they have seen Sharechat and Clip grow from scratch. Their advice will be of great value in building Lokal.”
With the lack of quality content in regional languages and an opportunity for growth in this domain as the number of vernacular users are expected to grow, many startups have started to focus on regional content to establish themselves in the regional markets.
Other players focused on vernacular driven content include news content aggregator NewsDog, it had recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Vision Plus Capital. P2P knowledge sharing platform Vokal had raised ₹34.5 crores ($5 million) in series A funding led by Shunwei Capital.