  We consider a neutrinophilic $U(1)$ extension of the standard model (SM)
which couples only to SM isosinglet neutral fermions, charged under the new
group. The neutral fermions couple to the SM matter fields through Yukawa
interactions. The neutrinos in the model get their masses from a standard
inverse-seesaw mechanism while an added scalar sector is responsible for the
breaking of the gauged $U(1)$ leading to a light neutral gauge boson ($Z'$),
which has minimal interaction with the SM sector. We study the phenomenology of
having such a light $Z'$ in the context of neutrinophilic interactions as well
as the role of allowing kinetic mixing between the new $U(1)$ group with the SM
hypercharge group. We show that current experimental searches allow for a very
light $Z'$ if it does not couple to SM fields directly and highlight the search
strategies at the LHC. We observe that multilepton final states in the form of
$(4\ell + \slashed{E}_T)$ and $(3\ell + 2j + \slashed{E}_T)$ could be crucial
in discovering such a neutrinophilic gauge boson lying in a mass range of
$200$--$500$ GeV.
