In the ninth episode of TC Show Off, a weekly show that provides startups a platform to showcase themselves, their business models, the core USP etc., News In Shorts showcases how it keeps users updated with all the current affairs by spending just 30 seconds per article.
According to Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder of the company, while traditional media houses provide long in-depth articles, users do not spend more than 20 minutes reading news. About 190 million people consume news on smart devices today. Hence, there was a need for a smartphone app that helps them consume news in less than 60 words.
Most of the news on the platform is filtered from Google news and then summarised manually by a team. In its space, the startup competes with the likes of Yahoo News Digest, a moderated app platform that provides 18 stories a day. In comparison, News In Shorts publishes 50. Purkayastha also claims that their quality is much better than the other auto summarise apps.
According to the company, it has seen over 27,000 downloads till date, out of which about 14 per cent are daily active users. Going forward, the firm will look at monetisation via native ads and sponsored content.
The startup was founded in August last year by Purkayastha, an IIT Kharagpur dropout, along with Azhar Iqubal and Anunay Arunav (both IIT Delhi dropouts).
Last month, the company had raised an undisclosed amount in seed FUNDING from Times Internet Ltd; with participations from Sachin and Binny Bansal (not related), co-founders of e-commerce major Flipkart.com; besides serial entrepreneurs Ankush Nijhawan; Gaurav Bhatnagar; and Manish Dhingra. The company is using the FUNDS for marketing, product improvement and expansion.
Watch the video for more.