Indian digital storytelling platform Pratilipi has now announced a fresh infusion of $20 million in a Series E funding round. The Bengaluru-based company, which operates one of the largest self-publishing platforms for Indian language literature, has now set its sights on global markets, particularly the US, and is exploring newer storytelling formats such as animation and vertical drama shows.
This latest funding round was led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures. The investment comprises $12 million in primary funding and an $8 million secondary transaction. However, the company is now valued at $100 million, which is lower than its previous valuation of $265 million. Still, it provides Pratilipi with the capital required to advance its expansion strategy and content innovations. To date, the company has raised a total of $108 million from a range of investors, including Krafton, Nexus Venture Partners, and Omidyar Network. Pratilipi has also indicated that this round may be its last primary fundraising before a planned initial public offering (IPO).
The latest funding round has also resulted in an investor reshuffle, with Chinese investors Qiming Venture Partners and Shunwei Capital exiting the company. Pratilipi’s co-founder and CEO, Ranjeet Pratap Singh, noted that this was a strategic move to streamline the company’s capitalization table in preparation for a public listing. “We wanted to clean our cap table before an IPO…We intend to go for an IPO sooner rather than later,” Singh stated. The firm currently operates on a freemium model, allowing Indian-language writers to share their stories for free while offering paid subscriptions for premium content. The company charges ₹149 for a monthly subscription, ₹749 for six months, and ₹1,499 annually. Additionally, users can purchase virtual coins to unlock specific content or opt for author-level subscriptions that grant access to premium stories from selected writers.
This comes at a time when the Indian startup has taken its first steps into the US market by launching its core online literature platform in the country. The company is currently in the experimental phase, and Singh revealed that the company intends to establish a small team in the U.S. to support these efforts. “We just launched two or three days ago and are still figuring things out. We’ll only know exactly how this will work after a few iterations. In the long term, we want it to be exactly like our literature business in India,” he said. Currently, a percentage of Pratilipi’s revenue comes from overseas markets, mainly from the Indian diaspora.
Pratilipi’s latest fundraising comes on the heels of a difficult period for the company, during which it faced financial constraints that led to delayed salary payouts for employees. To stabilize its finances, the company reduced its marketing expenditures by more than 90% and slowed down its intellectual property (IP) licensing efforts. Despite this, the firm managed to achieve profitability in its core online literature business, which now generates approximately ₹3 crore per month in free cash flow. “Our literature business itself was fundamentally so good that all that I had to do was not panic. Otherwise, literature itself pays off for everything else,” Singh said. Pratilipi also reported a 65.8% rise in its revenue, reaching ₹57.8 crore in FY24, up from ₹34.9 crore in FY23. Moreover, the company’s net losses have decreased by 61.9%, shrinking from ₹152.6 crore in FY23 to ₹58.1 crore in FY24.
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