Softbank’s Nikesh Arora doesn’t like news startups. Inshorts wants to change his mind.

Making money off news is a tough business, especially in today’s world of free information.
Just ask Sir Martin Sorell, who thinks papers will have to make customers pay for online content if they want to survive.

While prestigious newspapers across the world are dabbling with paywalls to generate revenues, Inshorts, a media startup that collates bite sized news from different media organizations and delivers them to users in 60 words, is pushing ahead with its plans for expansion, leaving the question of money making happily out of the equation.

For now.

Flush with US$20 million in funding from Flipkart backers Tiger Global, Inshorts has been consistently ranking among the top five news apps in the country as per App Annie. It launched a Hindi division and is prepping for a massive growth in app downloads as chief executive Azhar Iqubal plans to take his three year old startup places.

Azhar Iqubal, extreme right, with cofounders Deepit Purkayastha and Anunay Arnav.

That the sector has seen almost no big success stories anywhere in the world, thanks in part to that important question of how to make money, doesn’t faze Azhar.

“There is a very low focus [in the company] on how can we generate revenues. The only focus is on how can we get more users and give people the habit of reading news,” Azhar told Tech In Asia.

For the most part, a two year old startup not making money isn’t news by any counts. But one that stresses that it’s not even thinking of monetization? That’s uncommon.

Add to that the fact that Softbank’s Nikesh Arora has tweeted he is “no fan” of news-based startups because they’re hard to monetize, and it does raise more questions. Azhar, however, is steadfast in his views.

“We have grown almost 30 times in the last one year, and we will grow at least 10 times this year. But we cannot focus on two different things simultaneously. The only and only thing we are focused on right now is to identify users,” he said.

Inshorts currently counts about three million app downloads, and expects that number to hit at least 25 million this year. Azhar did not share monthly average user numbers, a key metric that helps gauge app popularity.

The app’s plans are to eventually become a “marketplace for news,” Azhar said.