Public App, a location-based social network launched by news aggregator Inshorts, has secured Rs 300 crore in funding from A91 Partners with participation from existing investors. The Public had raised Rs 260 crore in funding led by Lee Fixel's Addition, along with SIG and Tanglin Venture Partners six months ago.

Public App is a social network for hyper-local updates, hyper-local commerce, jobs, classifieds etc.

The company said the app is being used by over 50,000 elected officials, government authorities and citizen journalists to connect with their locality, while many local businesses have also started to use the app to reach their customers in the locality.

“We are very excited to have A91 Partners join us in our journey towards building the world’s largest location-based social network,” said Azhar Iqubal, CEO, Public App. “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,” Iqubal added.

“We are very excited to have A91 Partners join us in our journey towards building the world’s largest location-based social network,” said Azhar Iqubal, CEO, Public App. “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,” Iqubal added.

The company said many brands such as GSK, Amazon, HDFC Bank, have also started to use Public as a medium to reach out to these audiences. “We are building customized ad solutions for brands to better engage with the audiences while keeping the user experience intact”, said Iqubal.

The company plans to utilize the funding towards scaling up tech infrastructure, content offerings and employee base.

Public app was launched by Inshorts, in April 2019. The app is available in Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi.