Google to shut down 'Neighbourly' app

Tech giant Google will shut down its 'Neighbourly' app - which was designed to help people source local information from their neighbours - as it failed to scale up.

The app was launched in May 2018 in Mumbai and then scaled to other cities like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and Mysore. A few months later, it was made available pan-India.

"We set out to build a helpful neighbourhood app that would let neighbours help each other find answers to everyday questions about their neighbourhoods," a Google spokesperson said. However, the product has not grown like the company had hoped, the spokesperson added.

The shutdown of the app, which was part of Google's Next Billion Users initiative, comes at a time when the country is under a 21-day country-wide lockdown to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.