Mumbai-based NearFox Raises Funds From Clutch of Investors, Sets Sights on New York

NearFox, a local lifestyle content and ​​discovery platform headquartered in Mumbai, has recently raised an undisclosed amount from Globevestor Angel Fund, CoverFox CTO Devendra Rane, GenY Medium Co-founder and Ex-Principal of Ventureast Ravi Jain and Craftsvilla Products VP Arpan Nagdeve, among others.

The company will use the proceeds mainly for expanding the team and launching in more geographies. So far, it has been able to keep operational costs low through efficient use of technology, digital media and user-generated content.

Founded by Kiran Patil and Pritesh Mittal, both ​​IIT-Bombay graduates, in 2015, NearFox brings to users the best in the city in food, shopping, beauty, fashion, fitness, entertainment and local travel. The startup is currently operational in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, and plans to launch in New York next.

"While users are looking for what's happening in the city, businesses are going to the extent of distributing pamphlets with the morning paper to reach out to them. NearFox aims to solve this massive information asymmetry that exists in the local lifestyle segment," said Kiran.

Following 6-fold growth in website traffic over the last six months, NearFox currently gets 2.5 lakh visits per month. The company claims it's completely organic, without any marketing spend.

Ankur Shrivastava, Co-founder at Globevestor, said: "A huge untapped opportunity exists in the localization and personalization of content, especially on local news and discovery. NearFox aims to be at the forefront of this and has assembled an 'A team' very quickly. We've known them for a long time as the go-to people for content marketing and growth hacking, and they're easily the best team to deliver on this vision."

Kiran, a 2004 IIT-Bombay graduate, is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Organic Facts, a website on health and nutrition with a monthly traffic of 3 million. Formerly, he was head of sales at Chaupaati Bazaar, a startup acquired by Future Group in 2010. Pritesh, a 2014 IIT-Bombay graduate, was earlier working with JPMorgan Chase before the duo got together.

NearFox plans to be live in 10 cities by mid-2017, and aims to launch in 200 cities globally over three years, through expansion led by an extensive blogger network and sharp focus on user-generated content.

Locality App NearFox Provides Crowdsourced News & Happennings of Your Neighbourhood

In this 21st century, we're so consumed by our own self paced lives that we rarely come to know what's going around in our very own neighborhood. Sure, there are times when we all have planned to quit everything on a Saturday and go out and get to know the world around but seldom are we able to trade a comfy day lazing around in our bed and put that plan into action. If you're also one of these, who always had the urge but no time to stay updated on your local news and events, then we have the perfect thing in store for you.

NearFox, a Mumbai based startup, has taken up the responsibility to keep everyone updated about all the happening things happening around in their neighborhoods. From your neighbourhood news to fun events in the city to an awesome discussion forum, NearFox with its Android app promises to keep its users informed, entertained and clued in.

Kiran Patil and Pritesh Mittal, the brains behind the app, gave birth to NearFox after they observed that the information is either not available or is highly unorganized, on the micro-locality level. In fact, they faced the same problem on the hyperlocal level. That's when they decided to do something to fix the problem rather than just sit and crib about it.

[caption id="attachment_102162" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team of Nearfox[/caption]

Kiran and Pritesh are both IIT Bombay alumni, having diverse experience in the business field.
Having been the brains behind successful ventures like Villcart and Organic Facts, Kiran has vast experience of the startup ecosystem to his credit. Before coming up with NearFox, he was also heading the sales division in Chaupati Bazar before it finally got acquired by Future Bazaar in the year 2010. Pritesh, on the other hand, had started his career with JP Morgan Chase soon after his graduation till he decided to quit the job to pursue his real calling. He also has an experience of managing the operations of a US based think-tank, Rakshak Foundation, for 2 years.

The main aim behind the app is to reform the long-lost community-interaction. We have become so involved in our own lives nowadays that we hardly ever come to know what's happening around in the area where we spend most of our time in. The app plans to do this by providing its users with content that really matters to them.

With features like local news, events and talk-platform, the app's mission is target a vast demography of users in terms of occupation, age and gender etc. The main attraction of the app is that, apart from the curated content, everything available on the app is user generated.

With NearFox:

1. You can quickly scan news from your locality


2. Submit a story that you have witnessed in your locality or come to know about while taking your dog out for a stroll


3. Having a boring weekend? Use the NerFox app and discover all the local, fun outings, workshops and exhibitions, etc happening in your locality. Say hello to fun weekends.


4. Use the app to ask and answer questions, discuss things related to the neighborhood



5. Remain updated about the goings-on in your locality

Having launched in September this year, the app has already received more than 3000 downloads over the span of a month. The startup is currently bootstrapped but they are open to raising funds in order to better their services to their customers.

Looking for a one stop solution to know everything about your locality, go, download NearFox app right away and get connected to your neighborhood peeps.