Inshorts strengthens leadership team to fuel next phase of growth

Inshorts (The “Company”) has recently appointed Nikhil Taneja as Head of Corporate Development and Investor Relations and Pavit Singh Katoch as General Counsel to further strengthen its leadership team. The Company also announced the appointment of Abhijeet Ranjan as Chief Revenue Officer of Public app last month.

Prior to his appointment, Nikhil Taneja spent a decade in the investment banking team at Goldman Sachs, where he completed over $50bn of transactions in the technology, media and telecom (TMT) sector. In his most recent role, he was spearheading the Southeast Asia technology investment banking business for Goldman Sachs. As part of the senior leadership team at Inshorts, Nikhil will lead our corporate development efforts, including mergers and acquisitions, investor relations, and capital raising. In September 2021, Inshorts raised a $60 million funding led by Vy Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Addition, SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners. 

Pavit Singh Katoch is a seasoned legal professional with over 14 years of experience before various judicial fora, including cutting-edge matters concerning intermediary liability, privacy & data protection, cybersecurity and intellectual property. During his last stint as a Partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., Pavit specialised in litigation strategy and routinely represented social media companies such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram before the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts. He brings to Inshorts his diverse experience across domains such as information technology, intellectual property, content regulation laws, media laws, e-commerce laws, sports law, commercial, civil & criminal laws in India. As General Counsel at Inshorts, he will oversee all legal matters and work closely with business and policy teams to achieve strategic outcomes for the Company.

Earlier last month, Inshorts announced the appointment of Abhijeet Ranjan as Chief Revenue Officer of Public app. Abhijeet is responsible for accelerating the overall revenue growth of Public app and creating deeper inroads with national brands aiming for deeper market penetration via vernacular advertising. Abhijeet comes with a broad experience of over 15 years across top media companies, including Disney Star, Snapdeal, HT and ESPNcricinfo. He has been leading sales teams nationally for the last 11 years and was most recently National Sales Head for Star Plus.

Welcoming the new leaders on board, Deepit Purkayastha, Co-Founder & CSO of Inshorts said, “Innovation is the core of our DNA at Inshorts. Both Inshorts and Public apps were ideated and built to address significant gaps in quality and relevance in the Indian digital information delivery market. While both products were built for India and have achieved phenomenal success, we believe they are globally scalable use cases with significant international appeal. Inshorts is at an inflection point today, and our next phase of growth will be much faster and steeper while maintaining our robust profitability profile. Both Inshorts and Public app are category leaders, and we are delighted to welcome Nikhil, Pavit and Abhijeet to help us further consolidate this leadership position in India and international markets.”

Founded in 2013, Inshorts app pioneered the concept of news summary in 60 words or less, transforming the way news is consumed in India. Today Inshorts is India’s #1 English news app, with over 15 million users and 3 billion page views per month. After the phenomenal success of Inshorts, the Group launched its hyperlocal social media app Public in 2019. At a time when the market was cluttered with entertainment-focused short video apps, Public established itself as the market-leading platform, where only verified users create hyperlocal short video content. It became the #1 app for local updates on Google PlayStore within six months of its launch. Public app was ranked amongst the Top 25 most used Android apps in India across all categories by Sensor Tower in July 2022 and won the Most Innovative Start-up App award by IAMAI earlier this year.