Indian startup Vokal that specializes in vernacular knowledge sharing and is considered one of the largest in the business, has raised $6.5 million in its Series A funding. The key investors are Kalaari Capital, Chinese investor Shunwei Capital, 500 startups, Accel India and Blume Ventures
Vokal is quite confident that the growing spread of internet use by people from all walks of life and more users from the smaller towns and villages even have smartphones in their hands, the need for vernacular will only multiply.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and CEO, Vokal said, “There is a need to enable the next 500 million Internet users with a strong meaningful reason to use the Internet. Vokal is building towards that and has the potential to be one of the largest Internet companies in India. Kalaari Capital has been a strong investor in the past 10 years and understands the present fundamental need for a vernacular product to grow the market of Internet users. We see them as strong partners in our journey.”
The way Vokal offers contents in the vernacular languages is to include more videos and voice-based programmes that will hold the interest of the customers. The contents cover the areas of entertainment, news, information and knowledge. And it also provides a useful meeting point for creators of the contents in all these different genres and they are all 100% original as far as the Vokal platform is concerned. The platform can be used for asking questions on any subject and the answers will be posted by those who can, and this is how the exchange will take place.
“We believe most vernacular users will begin their internet journey consuming content in many forms - entertainment, news, information and knowledge. Vokal is solving for the knowledge and information needs of vernacular users through a unique platform that has a voice and video first approach, organically growing a strong community of creators and consumers, and 100% platform-originated content. It’s a problem that’s very close to our heart and we are excited to be a part of Vokal’s mission,” Darshit Vora, Principal, Kalaari Capital said in a statement.
In terms of numbers they claim there are 300,000 questions and more and they keep pouring in.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, the co-founder of Vokal was the original founder of ride-share startup, TaxiForSure, which was later sold to Ola. The price of this deal was mentioned to be around $200 million and this happened in 2015.