Location-based social network app Public has raised $35 million from venture capitalist Lee Fixel’s Addition, SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners.
Public, which was launched in April, 2019, is owned by news aggregator app Inshorts.
The funding by Addition marks the first investment in an Indian startup by Fixel, which launched the $1.3 billion venture capital firm earlier this year.
Fixel, a prolific investor in Indian startups, left New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global last year. Tiger Global, advised by Fixel, was one of the most active investors in India consumer internet companies, making early bets in Flipkart, Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd) and Quikr India Pvt Ltd.
Public App is social network platformfor everything local – from local updates and happenings to local commerce, jobs, classifieds and more.
“We are thrilled to have this support from Addition, SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners in our journey towards building the world’s largest location based social network,” said Azhar Iqubal, Founder & CEO, Public App.
“With more than 50 million active users and over 1 million videos being created every month on the app, Public aims to connect the local communities of Bharat and become the one stop solution for all their local needs,” Iqubal added.
The funding will be used to scale up tech infrastructure, content offerings and employee base to further speed up the growth and continue improving on retention and engagement, the firm said.
After its launch last year, Public app is now available in multiple Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi. It has around 50 million active users, with one million videos being created every month. The app allows people to record and share happenings around them enabling real-time local updates.