InUni: Content Discovery Platform Start-up Incubated at Amity Incubator

Conceptualizedin2017 and incubated at Amity Incubator centre Noida InUni is regional and city content discovery platform start-up. The start-up focuses on aggregating content for cities thus providing the user’s city-specific information in real time basis to discuss, connect, interact and share with people from all over the city on a mobile app. With an objective of creating on the go engaging hyper-local social experiences, InUni aims to enhance user experience with the focus on cost growth hacking strategy. i.e. using word-of-mouth on a big scale to achieve the exponential growth rates.

According to the KPMG-Google report Indian languages—Defining India’s Internet, India today speaks 780 languages written in 86 different scripts. Twenty-nine of them are spoken by at least million people, 22 are recognized by the Constitution as official languages. Unfortunately, the internet, as we know it today, is not fluent in Indian languages—they account for less than 0.1% of the content online. Indian language users already outnumber English speakers& presently this problem has to be addressed. Moreover, over 23 crore Indians (the equivalent of the entire population of Brazil) are Indian language internet users. And the internet is presented in a language they do not understand. To address this situation, InUni is trying to address this market.

This hyperlocal discovery platform merges online and offline platforms to fulfil the unleashed demand for news, e-celebs in tier 2&3 cities for regional content demand by the increasing internet penetration beyond urban metros. India is inching closer to becoming a digital-first nation as affordable smartphones and low priced 3G and 4G connections are driving Internet penetration and digital literacy in the country. Access to high-speed Internet connectivity is no longer restricted to metro cities, which is causing a massive shift in online content consumption patterns, across the country.

In mobile-first India, 68% internet users consider local language content to be more reliable than that delivered in the English language. By 2021, regional content will be the primary content consumed for 75% of Indian internet users. The demand for news as a genre sees the highest consumption at 67% which InUni delivers.

Team

InUni is the brainchild of Shashank Rai, Ashutosh Singh and Abdullah Haq, Anil Giri all hailing from tier- 2 towns working in Delhi. All the co-founders felt disconnected to hometown and felt a need to connect to their roots in home-towns. The start-up was therefore conceptualised in 2017with the support of Amity Innovation Incubator, Noida, now running with staff strength of 8 employees. The intrinsic aim is to create a hyperlocal content discovery platform, social networking and utility delivery.

Untapped potential

With the above came the realization of lack of localized digital content catering to Dig-Grow(cities where digital consumption was low but now growing rapidly) cities market and the untapped massive audience of 2-5 million population living in 54 cities. At this time digital media consumption in Dig-Growtowns is growing rapidly and ripe for innovative new habit-forming products and adoption. FICCI-KPMG 2016 Report highlights the digital advertising spending in 2017 at $1.7 billion, which is forecasted to grow at 30% CAGR by 2020.

As hundreds of millions of Indians log on to the internet, this platform will provide them personalized & localized digital experiences. Low-moderate adoption levels of news consumption make this a high growth segment. By 2021, regional language consumption will account for 75% of India’s internet user base. The growth of this user segment will be complemented with increasing penetration and adoption of 4G(KPMG Indian Language Content Report Localisation of content could be in terms of culture, language, product usage trends, etc.)

USP

InUni is not an app but an ecosystem for cities. Major USP lies in the fact that every city/town will have its own App be it big or small city. This model puts the city at centre, right and left of digital experience. City Apps published by InUni is a gateway to experience the city through ‘people eyes’. It connects, describes and narrate essence of a city in a clutter free manner giving great user experience. With simple swipes, users can find latest news, photos and information from the national & local source; get real-time city updates from social networks like Facebook, Twitter & others at one place.

The App can be downloaded from Google store by searching for In e.g. In Varanasi for Varanasi or In Lucknow for Lucknow. InUni has retained In prefix for all its apps on Play Store and most of its apps are already on top when you search for city news. It provides local news/ articles collected from more than 4000 trusted Facebook pages and newspapers where the users can share & comment on the favourite posts. The App is available in more than 18 languages covering 50 cities. This personalises feed using state of the art indigenous ML algorithms.

Future expansion

The company plans to expand to tier 2 & 3 Cities in India starting with Hindi speaking geography with a population of 1 million and deliver continuously the experience with agile feature roll-outs.With the focus on building a strong technology team, InUni to consolidate their position &enter other markets i.e. Indonesia and Brazil.

Traction

Currently, Monthly reach by all the channels of INUNI is 2.2 Million which is rising at a good pace.

Time Consumed on APP Last Month – 1,68,883 Minutes or greater than 1.5 Lacs Minute.

Sessions Per Month 75.5K

Sessions Per Day 2.4K

Fund Raising

Presently bootstrapped, InUni is in talks with investors to generate fund the future moves.

Company details

Website: http://inuni.io/