How news doesn't interest investors, but hyperlocal news apps do

Business models in this segment are hazy, profits seem far away for most. But investors see something in hyperlocal apps

Azhar Iqubal is grappling with a problem. The co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts is trying to improve the quality of the 50,000 videos Public, Inshorts’ short video news app, gets daily.

Unlike Inshorts, which aggregates news from various sources in 60-word bytes, Public is literally a public news app. A ward representative, local politician, resident, student, housewife, anyone can upload a video of up to a minute on local happenings. It could be about a fight over water, a wedding, or a store opening, or any of the other myriad such things.

Since its 2019 launch, Public has gathered