Way2News, Hyperlocal Short News App, witnessed a ‘big surge’ in the overall growth charts. The news app, in the last 30 days recorded over 60 per cent growth in its Daily Active Users (DAUs) in all eight languages — Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada and Malayalam.
As it continues to bring trusted and reliable news stories from across the world in short-summarized flip format.
Home-bound Indians are increasingly consuming news via apps, especially during the lockdown. In this period, our downloads grew by 150 percent, while the engagement on the app increased by 50 per cent. Moreover, the time spent per daily active user is over 24 minutes per person a day.
The hyperlocal initiative of Way2News is changing with the times. The app is adding new districts, mandals/talukas and villages to the offering. It is investing its sources in hyperlocal news dissemination. This is where it is standing out. The old and the new users are highly trusting its journalistic standards.
The company is continuously working towards maintaining the trust among its users. Talking about its reach, so far, it expanded its presence in 3479 mandals and added 19,000 plus new villages — covering a total of 1,20,000 villages from about 475 districts.
Besides news coverage, apps like Way2News have been quite impactful in highlighting local issues of roads, schools etc. and putting them forward to the right authorities.
Note: This article was first published on BusinessWorld - April 23, 2020.