Inshorts’s video content arm Public makes it to the big league

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Editor's note: This week saw a rather striking venture capital investment that needs to be talked about. On Wednesday, a social network for hyperlocal video content called Public raised $41 million in funding. The round was led by A91 Partners and some of the existing investors in Public. That’s the news part of the deal. But it is also where things get interesting. Public comes from the house of Delhi-based online news aggregator Inshorts, which has been quietly bulking up for about seven years now. This is the second investment in Inshorts in about six months; in September, the company had raised $35 million in a round led by Lee Fixel’s venture capital firm Addition, and the funding was supposed to go to Public. Following the latest round, Public is valued at about $250 million. These are no small details and need to be understood in the context of the ecosystem that Public operates in. It is essentially a social network that serves you video content—news, updates, jobs, commerce, classifieds—based on your location. According to its founder and chief executive officer, Azhar …