Indian venture debt fund Alteria Capital Advisors Llp has invested ₹20 crore, as a part of its new funding deal in Pratilipi, a vernacular digital platform.
Pratilipi is expected to use the money from Alteria to expand its user base through investments in marketing.
Pratilipi, founded in 2015, is a storytelling platform that primarily focuses on Indian languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Telugu, and English. Since inception, it has garnered more than 350 ,000 writers who have published over 4.5 million stories in regional languages.
“We have been exchanging thoughts around Pratilipi and our growth plans with Alteria for a few years now. As we started expanding into newer products and experimenting with various monetization channels, we thought this may be a good time to make this relationship a little more formal. We are delighted and privileged to have the Alteria team joining us as we take the next step of our journey in scaling Pratilipi,” said Ranjeet Pratap Singh, co-founder and chief executive of Pratilipi.
The company claims to have more than 28.5 million monthly active readers on its platform. Over the years, the startup has launched sub-categories and sub-products within the brand, including Pratilipi Literature, Pratilipi Comics, and Pratilipi FM.
Comics and FM are stepping up well with 850,000 and 300,000 monthly active users respectively, the company said. Stories from the platform have been licensed as books to traditional publishers apart from shows and animated series, which are under development.
“We have been tracking Pratilipi from its early days and have been thrilled to see the expansion of this home-grown storytelling platform. Our rich Indian language literature has been hidden in academic books and offline bookstores for very long. Pratilipi is playing a pioneering role in enabling regional language authors to provide massive reach for their content as well as engagement with readers and listeners,” said Ankit Agarwal, partner, Alteria Capital.
The venture debt provider operates with a corpus of ₹2,300 crore across two funds.
