Pratilipi, an Indian startup that operates an online storytelling platform to enable writers to fragment their work in masses of formats, said on Wednesday it has raised $48 million in a modern financing spherical led by Krafton.
South Korean gaming giant Krafton led the Sequence D spherical for the seven-yr-outdated Bangalore-essentially essentially based startup, bringing its to-date elevate to $78.8 million.
Present investor Omidyar Community India as effectively as ratings of excessive-profile entrepreneurs along side Pratilipi chief govt Ranjeet Pratap Singh as effectively as Unacademy’s Hemesh Singh and Gaurav Munjal, Locus’ Nishith Rastogi, Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey, Udhyam’s Mekin Maheshwari and NoBroker’s Amit Agarwal additionally participated in the spherical.
Pratilipi started its mosey as an web reading and writing platform where writers shared their reviews in numerous Indian languages. The foundation at the time used to be to earn a platform where quality literary work will be hosted and shared in Indian languages, something that simplest had sparse representation on the win, said Singh, who is a voracious reader of Indian literary work and labored at Vodafone before starting Pratilipi, in an interview with TechCrunch.
The platform has ballooned to become a market chief in the years since. Over 370,000 writers on the platform this day fragment their work in a dozen languages and more than 30 million readers browse Pratilipi every month to read reviews.
These writers can devour to fragment their work with readers totally free or charge a subscription price. But more and more there’s one other avenue for them to monetize their work.
Pratilipi — which has expanded to book publishing, audio and comics at present — makes employ of proprietary algorithms to establish reviews that it believes will be turned correct into a book or a web series and buys the IP from the writers.
The startup, which behind final yr purchased native market leading podcast community (IVM Podcasts), has inked several partnerships with industry gamers along side giant on-ask video streaming carrier MX Player, which carried Pratilipi’s roar “Dreary night Lily” earlier this yr.
“We’ve been a segment of Pratilipi’s development sage since the early stages,” said Pratik Poddar, Predominant at Nexus Mission Partners, an early backer of Pratilipi, in an announcement. “Over time, we now beget witnessed the staff’s deep product focus, an obsession to make creators a hit, and alive to working out of monetizing vow material IP which is extensible across diversified formats.”
Pratilipi’s Singh said the startup will deploy the modern funding to expand its partnerships with industry gamers as effectively as invest in building in-residence publishing stack. With Krafton, which lately launched the Battlegrounds Mobile India sport in the South Asian nation, the startup aims to make reviews that would possibly perchance well also be included into world gaming franchises.
The ask for authentic reviews has surged in India at present and diverse streaming products and services and publishing giants are racy with Pratilipi, he said. “We can proceed to work with ecosystem partners and for formats where we already beget in-residence expertise we’ll have the choice to expand on these,” he said.
Pratilipi additionally plans to employ the modern funds to expand inaugurate air of India. A share of its customers this day already dwell inaugurate air the nation, said Singh. “We haven’t labored on the expansion thus a long way, but now the belief is to actively attain out to creators and readers in diversified markets,” he said.
Wednesday’s announcement additionally illustrates Krafton’s rising push into the Indian market, where in fresh months it has held talks to earn several gaming studios, per a person familiar with the topic. In March, the firm led a $22.4 million funding in Nodwin and final month it co-led a $9 million spherical in Loco.
“It’s thrilling to survey the expansion of Indian native IPs in online literature, comics and audio platform in Pratilipi, which is already essentially the critical participant in India in multiple categories,” said Sean Hyunil Sohn, Head of Krafton’s India division, in an announcement.
“With Pratilipi already having a multilingual platform for online literature, it is a long way poised to become one among the strongest gamers in rising markets sooner or later. Krafton believes in prolonged inch doable of native Indian IPs that would possibly perchance well also assign success now not lawful in India but globally as effectively across formats along side literature, comics and gaming and our funding in Pratilipi is one other step in realising that vision.”
