Vishal Chaudhary of Nyburs on Building Sovereign Hyperlocal Social Networks, Trust-First Communication, and Digital Infrastructure for Bharat

StartupTalky presents Recap'25, a series of exclusive interviews where we connect with founders and industry leaders to reflect on their journey in 2025 and discuss their vision for the future. 

In this edition of Recap’25, StartupTalky speaks with Vishal Chaudhary, CMO of Nyburs, who shares insights on building India’s first sovereign hyperlocal social networking platform designed to connect underserved users to their digital locality. He reflects on two major gaps shaping the next phase of India’s digital growth—sovereign communication that guarantees reach and accuracy for citizen updates, and hyperlocal discovery that makes local jobs, schemes, services, and community resources visible beyond metro-centric platforms.

Chaudhary explains how Nyburs is building a utility-driven digital ecosystem through Circles and Channels that enable panchayat-level communities and two-way government-to-citizen communication, along with verified commerce via SMB listings, micro-jobs, and resource hubs. The conversation explores Nyburs’ low-cost acquisition strategy powered by user-created communities, its focus on trust and data sovereignty, and the company’s roadmap for scaling to millions of users. He also shares key learnings from 2025 and how Nyburs is integrating AI-based moderation and citizen-assistant tools to enable secure, multilingual access to information at scale—building a defensible digital infrastructure layer for Bharat.

StartupTalky: What service does Nyburs provide? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Nyburs is India's first sovereign hyperlocal social networking platform. We are building a digital social ecosystem that connects over 800 million underserved users to their digital locality. Specifically, we provide: 

• Hyperlocal Connectivity: "Circles" that allow communities to form at the panchayat or ward level. 
• Sovereign Communication: A verified channel for government-to-citizen communication that guarantees reach for critical updates, unlike algorithm-dependent foreign platforms. 
• Verified Commerce: A marketplace connecting local SMBs, micro-jobs, and government schemes to citizens. 

StartupTalky: What was the motivation/vision with which you started? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Our vision is "Building Sovereign Digital Infrastructure for India". We identified two massive critical gaps: 

• The Sovereign Communication Gap: Global platforms serve foreign policy objectives and optimize for engagement rather than accuracy. Critical government alerts were competing with entertainment content. 
• The Local Discovery Deadlock: Rural and Tier 2-3 cities (70% of India's population) are invisible on global apps. We wanted to make local resources - like schemes and health camps - visible and accessible. 

StartupTalky: What new services have been added in the past year? 

Vishal Chaudhary: We have been aggressively innovating to deepen the hyperlocal experience: 

• Circles: A feature allowing users to create topic-based communities at any geographic level, from state-wide down to a single village. 
• Channels: Unlike the broadcast-only models of Telegram or WhatsApp, we launched bidirectional messaging infrastructure that allows genuine dialogue between government departments and citizens. 
• Business Resources Hub: A verified layer aggregating government schemes, local jobs, and SMB listings. 
• Internal Development: I have also been actively researching and implementing smart agent functionalities using stacks like LangGraph and Ollama to build high-performance, hyperlocal moderation bots for these new communities. 

StartupTalky: What are the USPs of your service? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Our core USP is Precision and Sovereignty. 

• Granularity: While Facebook Groups stop at the city level, Nyburs Circles enable panchayat-level precision. 
• Trust: We offer a "Verified Information Infrastructure" comparable to a Bloomberg Terminal for citizen engagement. 
• ROI: For local businesses, our hyperlocal targeting offers 10x better ROI than metro-focused platforms. 

StartupTalky: How has the industry changed in recent years and how has your company adapted? 

Vishal Chaudhary: The industry has shifted from "connection at all costs" to a demand for trust and data sovereignty. Users and governments are realizing that reliance on foreign platforms creates vulnerabilities in data governance and moderation. We adapted by building a platform where the algorithms and data governance are sovereign. We moved away from the "infinite scroll" of entertainment to a utility-driven model that connects citizens to real opportunities - jobs, schemes, and local commerce. 

StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company's growth and performance? 

Vishal Chaudhary: As CMO, I focus heavily on unit economics and retention: 

• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): We are currently achieving a CAC of INR 3-5, which is 10-15x lower than the industry standard of INR 50-75. 
• Engagement: We track DAU/WAU ratios and Posts Created (currently 400K+, averaging ~3 posts per user). 
• Community Density: The number of "Circles Created" (4,000+) is a vital health metric for our hyperlocal model. 
• Growth: We recently tracked a 478% MoM growth in active users.  

StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them? 

Vishal Chaudhary: The Trust Gap: Convincing users to switch from established giants is difficult. We overcame this by solving the "Discovery Deadlock" - giving them access to local jobs and government schemes they literally cannot find on Instagram or X. 

• Bureaucracy & Fundraising: Navigating the regulatory landscape for a "Sovereign" platform and securing capital has been intense. We are actively engaged in a fundraising round to scale from 150K to 3 million users and recently undertook the complex process

of registering our private limited entity to ensure full compliance. 

StartupTalky: What marketing strategies and growth hacks have you used? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Strategy: We use a "Hyperlocal First" strategy. Instead of national campaigns, we empower users to build their own micro-communities. 

• The Growth Hack: Our "Circles" feature was our biggest hack. By allowing users to self-create communities for their specific villages or interests (e.g., "Physics Numerical Doubts" or local sports), we triggered organic virality. This user-generated structure is exactly why our CAC is so low (INR 3-5) compared to competitors. 

StartupTalky: What important tools and software do you use to run your business? 

Vishal Chaudhary: My background in digital transformation heavily influences our stack. Beyond standard tools, we rely on: 

• Automation: n8n for orchestrating complex marketing and operational workflows.
• Data Intelligence: Puppeteer for web scraping to understand market gaps and populate initial resource hubs. 
• AI & Tech: Ollama for running local AI models to ensure data privacy while processing insights, and Three.js/WebGL for creating immersive web experiences, which aligns with my personal expertise in 3D web development. 

StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry? 

Vishal Chaudhary: The biggest opportunity is the 800 million underserved users in Rural and Tier 2/3 India. Globally, there is a massive vacuum for "Sovereign Tech" - countries want their own infrastructure rather than relying on Silicon Valley. We see a distinct market behavior difference: In the West, social media is largely recreational. In India, it is becoming utilitarian. Indian users, especially in Tier 2-3 cities, are looking for value - jobs, schemes, and health services - not just entertainment. 

StartupTalky: How are you using AI in your operations? 

Vishal Chaudhary: We are building an AI-driven verification and personalization stack. 

• Customer Experience: We are deploying smart bots (using LangGraph/Groq) to handle hyperlocal moderation and serve as "citizen assistants" that can answer queries about government schemes in local languages. 
• Internal: We use AI to map hyperlocal resources, turning unstructured data about local businesses into a structured, searchable "Business Resources Hub". 

StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand in the future? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Customers: Our roadmap targets 500K MAU by Q1 2026 and 5M+ users by Q4 2026.

• Services: We will launch Live Streaming, ProChat, and a Political Dashboard for candidates to manage their digital outreach.
• Team: We are expanding our engineering team and building a strong on-ground operations force to support national rollout. 

StartupTalky: What tip would you share with another Service company founder? 

Vishal Chaudhary: Don't just build a "platform"; build an ecosystem. If you can solve a real, boring problem (like helping a villager find a government scheme) rather than just chasing "likes," you build a defensible moat that global giants can't touch.

Explore more Recap'25 interviews here.