IIT dropouts' mobile news curator News In Shorts raises $4M from Tiger Global, others

Delhi-based ADA News in Shorts Pvt Ltd, owner of News in Shorts, a mobile-based service that aggregates news stories from across the globe, has raised $4 million (Rs 25 crore) in Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global with participation from Rebright Partners of Japan and existing investors Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (unrelated), co-founders of Flipkart.

"We aim to own the mobile content space. Thousands of different forms - textual, video, audio - of content are being generated every day. We intend to make all of this content easily consumable on mobile devices," said Azhar Iqubal, co-founder and CEO, News In Shorts.

The startup was founded in August 2013 by Deepit Purkayastha, an IIT Kharagpur dropout, along with Iqubal and Anunay Arunav (both IIT Delhi dropouts). It's app picks news stories from across categories, edits them and provides the essence of those stories within 60 words each. Users can also pick news stories from categories such as national, business, sports, technology, entertainment and miscellaneous. They can also read the full coverage by clicking on the link of the source provided at the end of each story.

"Mobile content is ripe for disruption, and the News in Shorts team understands the opportunities very well. We believe they can revolutionize the way content is being consumed on mobile devices. The 60-word news 'shorts' is just a step towards that goal," said Lee Fixel of Tiger Global.

The TLABS incubatee had raised its seed round in June 2014, led by angel investors and mentors Ankush Nijhawan, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Manish Dhingra, with participation from Flipkart co-founders as well as Times Internet.

"We admire News In Shorts for its dedication to create disruption in the news space. Clutter free and immensely fast, News In Shorts gains the faith of a user in short period of time. We believe in the immense potential and high traction that the application is already getting, and this round of funding will give wings to their ambitions," said Sachin Bansal.

The company claims to have over 100,000 downloads on Android alone so far. It is also available on iOS.