Indian social network Public App raises Rs 300 cr

Launched by short news aggregator Inshorts in 2019, Public earlier raised Rs 260 crore in funding led by Addition, along with SIG and Tanglin Venture Partners six months ago.

"With more than 50 million active users in India, we first aim to connect the hyper-local communities of Bharat and later make the product global," said Azhar Iqubal, Founder & CEO, Public App.

The company aims to utilise the funding towards rapid scaling up of tech infrastructure, content offerings and employee base to further speed up the growth and continue improving on retention and engagement.

Public App is a social network for hyper-local updates and happenings to hyper-local commerce, jobs, classifieds and more.

The app is already being used by over 50,000 elected officials, government authorities and citizen journalists to connect with their locality.

Additionally, many local businesses have also started to use the app to reach their customers in the locality, the company said.

"Public has continued to maintain best in class retention and engagement metrics while scaling. We look forward to working closely with the founders to help build an outstanding company," said Gautam Mago, General Partner at A91 Partners.

Several brands such as GSK, Amazon and HDFC Bank have started to use Public as a medium to reach out to these audiences.

"We are building customised ad solutions for brands to better engage with the audiences while keeping the user experience intact", said Iqubal.

The app is available in several languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi.