In the field of technology, entrepreneurship and the new start-ups Azhar Iqubal is among those guys. From starting in his university dorm to making himself a tech-entrepreneur, he was very focused on what he does. As his story tells us, ambition, however hard or a new concept, can always lead to big achievements.
Source: The Economic Times
Azhar Iqubal who started his business on Facebook and now is one of the biggest corporations in the world. This app is known as Inshorts which is the name of the company. It is a news app that brings stories from the internet and, after shortening their lengths to 60 words each, presents them.
| Category | Information |
| Name | Azhar Iqubal |
| Background | Belonged to Kishanganj, Bihar, India. From a lower-middle-class family background. |
| Education | Offered a place at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi in 2009. |
| Academic Focus | Computer Science student. |
| Achievements | Scored about 600 in the JEE (competitive college entrance exam). |
| Entrepreneurial | Founded Inshorts, a news app, starting on Facebook and growing into one of the biggest corporations globally. Known for bringing short news stories from the internet. |
| Characteristics | Passionate about learning. |
Azhar Iqubal: Early Life And Education
Azhar Iqubal belonged to Kishanganj, Bihar, India, was from a lower-middle class family background. He showed his passion for learning by displaying extraordinary skills in academics at the early stage of his life During 2009 he was offered a place in the very renowned Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, which is known for its exceptional categories in the field of technical education.
As a Computer Science specific student and through a scholarship provided him with the foundation for the business and technology pursuits that would come later. On top of his good academic record are his notable achievements, scoring only about 600 in the JEE, a competitive college entrance exam. On top of that, he started an integrated M.Tech program at IIT Delhi, a firm idea of his academic ambition that he followed until he had all his eyes on entrepreneurial startups.
Azhar Iqubal’s Success Story: The Entrepreneurial Journey
Being Azhar Iqubal together with his schoolmate from IIT Delhi Anunay Pandey and Deepit Purkayastha appointed from IIT Kharagpur they created in 2013 their Facebook page which was linked to News in Shorts. This platform, a new inventive application, brought into play concise listings of the news, captivated users’ meeting to its faster setup culture. The event became exposure when the venture won recognition from the Times Internet-TLabs Startup Accelerator.
Azhar’s way of life shows a breadth of curiosity, sustainability in failure, and the dream for cheap information. The end of this trip eventually brought to the economic uprising of Inshorts, which totally reshaped the way news is taken in.
Dean Balance secures the success of InShorts and gains more confidence to start his next venture, Public App in January of 2019. With the goal of bringing together Indians coming from different local communities, but bound by digital relationships, this platform was created as a form of his acceptance of technology, which can be used in strengthening societal networks.
Azhar Iqubal’s Success story : About Inshorts
source: Behance
Inshort is an Indian-based news content distribution firm that provides brief news updates of about 60-word in text.Thereby, featuring oneself in a wide segment, Inshorts provides readers with easily accessible daily news summaries through just one click. It seems the user base has experienced a great deal of growth since its inception, when it was far less popular compared to now, with a number of users rising from about 100,000 in December of 2014 to almost 3 million currently.
Besides that, Inshorts have been exceptionally successful in developing attractive advertising solutions and offering more than two hundred top brands an opportunity to handle their advertisements. Their partnership with industry bigwigs like Vodafone, OnePlus, Mercedes, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Myntra has thrived immensely and is now one of the key pillars on which the operational viability relies, with a mere five years of inception onto the market.
Through its intelligent infographic approach, Inshorts is leading the way in the areas of news delivery, and has altered the reading habits of most of its users. As it features a pointed and brief format, the app is ideally suited to the modern trends of efficiency and convenience focusing towards a stressful and quick-fire life. On the contrary to traditional news sources which are often long articles and extensive coverage, Inshorts offers a shortened and to some extent a compelling choice, allowing users to be well-informed and vigilant citizens even with the limitation of time.
Inshorts: A Journey Of Efficient News Consumption
The Inshorts project can be said to have been born through the successful bootstrap program that Azhar Iqubal and his partners had completed at TLabs and then turned it into a full-fledged business enterprise.
Source: Yourstory.com
Drawing out their vision, they came into being and founded Inshorts, making use of the foundations that were already laid, which was called “News in Shorts”. Inshorts was constructed as a news platform providing the simplest way to stay updated on today’s happenings, but they ensured it was a quick and effective way to piece together everything relevant, meeting the demand of the people who are always so busy to consume information.
In the beginning stages Inshorts grabbed considerable attention and support, thus securing it a good investment. Markable deals include $250,000 seed funding in 2013 from TLabs and major fund-raising rounds in subsequent years, such as in 2014 and the current project of $60 million, as reported by Stars Unfolded. First, these sponsorships confirm a key marker: Inshorts has unique prospects to grow within the media market.
The app’s success is confirmed by its efficient summarization capabilities of resources up to reading level of 10 AM classes. This style of news delivery offered audiences the kind of sleek, effortless news experince they had been longing for. Competitor media outlets soon lost out in this niche segment of the news industry.
Having become widely known through positive word-of-mouth and a spike in usage numbers, in which Inshorts overtook others, the company now remains the undisputed leader of news aggregation. Then for the next five years it turned into India’s English No.1 news app and today it has more than 10 million readers on its mobile app.
With its superb results in the first five years of operation, Inshorts has built trust from more than 500 brands (both marketers and content creators) who have supported it for its state-of-the-art marketing campaign and content collaborations. Not only this Azhar was just a little step to this he also went forward in 2019, by launching Public App, a location-based social network. The platform came into existence and amazed everyone by doubling the number of active users within a short span of time. And from today, it is a foundational cluster of digital community engagement, as India.
Shark Tank India: Azhar Iqubal’s Journey to Startup Success and his Contribution to the Startup World
Source: News18
Azhar Iqubal’s longest way turned out to be the most satisfactory one, and he himself became the judge of this popular TV show in October 2023, thus gaining a unique experience of a TV entrepreneur in addition to his impressive achievements. Azhar may also act as a judge looking to enlighten and time-tested businesses with advice and leadership for start-ups to identify the investment objective of untested innovative business ideas.
His appearance on the Shark Tank India TV show is a testament to his unwavering commitment of empowering and fostering the startup community and to encourage the growing trend of entrepreneurship among aspiring young founders in India. His story, from a flunkout of the Indian Institute of Technology to a market guru of the startup ecosystem, stands as a midnight glow of hope for millions of people who want to excel their business-related aspirations.
In his continuing mission on Shark Tank India, Azhar not only provides seed funding for innovators but also helps them find success in their entrepreneurial journeys. Considering the fact that it provides these individuals a chance to pitch their ideas as well as secure money capital for their businesses, he plays an important role in the worldwide growth of entrepreneurship in the country.
Inshorts: Company Highlights
| Aspects | Details |
| Startup Name | Inshorts |
| Headquarters | Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Sector | Digital Media, Internet, Mobile App, News |
| Founders | Azhar Iqubal, Deepit Purkayastha, and Anunay Arunav |
| Founded | 2015 |
Inshorts: Business Model
At Inshorts, the business model is fast, well calculated and aimed at bettering the user’s experience through delivering concise, relevant and personalized news articles to the readers. The platform retrieves the article and blog content from various independent sources and summarizes them in very short posts composed of 60 words with interesting headlines and attractive photos to attract the attention of readers.
Indicating the universally imposed shortage of time and by trying to captivate and hold users’ interest and imply them to spend a little time daily with this app. Capitalizing on massive user engagement, advertisement clogged view places and the essential revenue engine. It has a user-friendly interface that makes the navigation a breeze, and all further upgrades as well as tailoring may be applied to align with personal preferences.
Inshorts :Products and Services
Inshorts offers a range of products and services, as outlined below:
Source: Entrackr
Inshorts App:
On distinguishing itself, Inshorts application provides the updated and relevant news from several main news sources among which are national and international. Characterized by the brevity of its formats, 60 words length each and customization according to the person’s preferences, which is either English or Hindi, it stands out in this industry.
Having content formatted to suit user preferences, the app is the most suitable source for the up-to-date and no-hassle information access; therefore, users no longer struggle with the old News consumption mode.
Public App:
Through Public, a geo-based social networking platform, there has been an unimaginable amount of users registration since the beta launch saw it become the leading Indian social platform to gain sensible heights exploitive only six months. Their different offerings make the platform stand out, especially for the ones living in the smaller cities and towns as they can capture and send their local update in real time.
Public impels local engagement and facilitates the user empowerment to have informed and relevant news updates through the posting of diverse content on a regular basis. It is almost unbelievable that the app has since become a source of daily updates adjacent to the everyday lives of its users. In addition, the immediacy, the location-specificity, and the community and connection factors of the updates lead the users to feel like they’re really part of a group.
Inshorts: Marketing Strategy
Source: BW Marketing World
Inshorts had a clever way of getting noticed, here are some things they did:
Putting Users First: The main distinction that differentiated Inshorts from the competitors was the fact that, instead of merely disregarding the time people spent on the app or their stories’ popularity, the company paid more attention to making sure its users favored the app.
Easy-to-Use App: They created a simple and user-friendly app with almost unnecessary functions and with the power to customize what users see. This room opens up a new world of reading the short news stories to people in a hassle-free manner.
Personalized News: Inshorts recognized this importance and took steps like picking stories closest to the user’s interests and finding similar stories based on their previous liking.
Smart Use of Data: They are utilizing data to unravel what is working and what should be enhanced. This was of great help to them as they made the app to become a reliable source of news by knowing which news to air as also to improve the app.
Local Touch: Inshorts designed the application to individualize the experience for different cities, because people in different cities like different topics. Simply what people in the different regions like reading, they crafted their app so that that to be able to fit that to the people.
Inshorts: Top Competitors
| Competitor |
| Dailyhunt |
| TOI (Times of India) |
| timesnownews.com |
| freepressjournal.in |
| theprint.in |
| livemint.com |
Conclusion
The story that Azhar Iqubal went through from a lower-middle class family background in Kishanganj, Bihar to being a key player in the tech industry is incredibly amazing as well. Growing ambition to learn and later humble beginning to his educational journey at ITA Delhi and founding one of the most innovative news platforms, Inshorts was the stepping stone of success for him.
This founding of Inshorts which was done by him alongside his schoolmates Anunay Pandey and Deepit Purkayastha reveals Azhar’s entrepreneurial spirit and his capability to perceive the need of conciseness in information including that found in the news. Moving from a Facebook page to a whole company with financing sources like trying markets indicates.
