Empowering the next billion through design thinking

Jani Pasha is an entrepreneur and CEO of Lokal. The IIT Kharagpur alumnus was featured alongside his co-founder Vipul Chaudhary in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Asia. In conducting UX research for a previous project, Jani discovered that emulating mental models experienced in rural settings could be an effective UI/UX approach to bring modern technology into the hands of millions of unexposed individuals in India. Thus, the seed to create a hyper-local news application, an often-overlooked feature of vernacular languages was planted. This vision birthed the Lokal app, which now features not only local-language news, but classifieds, real estate listings, and many more use-cases. The app currently has more than 5 million downloads and has an average 4.5-star user rating on the Play Store. In our discussion with Jani, we delve into his life before and after Lokal and discuss the app in far more detail. One of the big talking points is how exactly Jani isolated the need for a product such as this, and the various transformations it underwent before taking its current form. We discuss his team at Lokal, and how the fact that most of them belong to tier-two and tier-three cities helps build a natural affinity and empathy with the product. Lastly, Jani also goes into how he came across Onething, and why he ended up reaching outwards to fulfill his UX/UI needs, and the impact it has had. The podcast shines a light on how crucial UX design-based research is to target a new audience, as Jani discusses how it helped Lokal better achieve their KPIs. Jani also imparts further knowledge on some of the barriers he and his team had to overcome in the forms of technology, and language especially, and talks about what exactly goes into targeting a sleeping-giant esque market of millions. Another one of the biggest takeaways from the podcast would be the nature of startup funding in a modern context as well, and how Jani went about securing a Y Combinator investment. To learn more about Jani Pasha, Lokal, and the nature of creating a digital product for unique and untargeted audiences, check out the Business and UX Story podcast!