Local language social platform Khidki raises fresh funding

Location-based local language social platform Khidki has raised an undisclosed sum in a round led by Axilor Ventures the investment firm-cum-accelerator led by Infosys founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal.

Other investors who participated in the round include venture capital firm Astarc Ventures, early-stage investor Gemba Capital, incubator Purple Patch Ventures and dealmaking platform LetsVenture, a report in The Economic Times said.

The company will use the capital for product building and geographical expansion, the report added, citing co-founder Kumar Saurabh.

Khidki is widely used in the state of Gujarat where it has four lakh users and was recently launched in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The app was incorporated in January 2017 by IIIT-Allahabad batch mates Kapil Agarwal and Saurabh. Agarwal was previously associated with now defunct on-demand food delivery app TinyOwl while Saurabh has worked for Amazon in his previous stint.

The company was one of 20 companies who were a part of the winter 2017 accelerator batch of Axilor Ventures.

Startups in the space

The success of ShareChat as a local language social media platform which raised $100 million led by Shunwei Capital earlier this year has spurred investor interest in the space of local language chat apps and social networks.

Shunwei Capital had also led a round in local language content sharing platform Vokal in July as well as local language health content app, myUpchar.

Short video content platform Clip raised Series A round from Matrix Partners in December 2017.