News curator ”News-in-Shorts” has raised Rs 25 crore in Series A funding. The investment is led by Tiger Global, with participation from Rebright Partners of Japan and existing investors Sachin and Binny Bansal.
The TLABS incubatee company had raised its seed round in June 2014, led by angel investors and mentors Ankush Nijhawan, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Manish Dhingra, with participation from Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, as well as Times Internet.
“Mobile content is ripe for disruption, and the News in Shorts team understands the opportunities very well. We believe they can revolutionize the way content is being consumed on mobile devices. The 60-word news ‘shorts’ is just a step towards that goal,” said Lee Fixel of Tiger Global.
There are many challenges in making content easily consumable on mobile devices. Personalization is one of the most important of those challenges. None of the news apps in India is personalising the user experience algorithmically at present, said the company in a press statement. News in Shorts plans to be the first to do so in India.
“We admire News In Shorts for its dedication to create disruption in the news space. Clutter free and immensely fast, News In Shorts gains the faith of a user in short period of time. We believe in the immense potential and high traction that the application is already getting, and this round of funding will give wings to their ambitions,” said Sachin Bansal.
“We aim to own the mobile content space. Thousands of different forms – textual, video, audio – of content are being generated everyday. We intend to make all of this content easily consumable on mobile devices,” said Azhar Iqubal, Co-Founder and CEO, News In Shorts. The funds will be used to achieve that goal.
