Pratilipi Raises $48mn in Series D Led By KRAFTON Inc

Pratilipi, India’s largest online storytelling platform, announced today that it has raised a fresh round of funding of $48mn in its Series D. Led by South Korean Gaming Giant, KRAFTON Inc. this funding round takes the total amount Pratilipi has raised till date to $78.8mn. The company’s existing investor, Omidyar Network India, also participated in the round along with a host of start-up founders including Hemesh Singh and Gaurav Munjal (Unacademy), Nishith Rastogi (Locus), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Vidit Aatrey (Meesho), Mekin Maheshwari (Udhyam), Amit Agarwal (NoBroker) and Ranjeet Pratap Singh, CEO, Pratilipi. Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Pratilipi on this transaction.

This new round of funding is going to help Pratilipi strengthen its IP acquisition and development across various formats including audiobooks, podcasts, comics, web series, movies, and games, etc. Part of the investment will be utilized for expansion in several overseas markets.

Bengaluru headquartered Pratilipi was co-founded in 2015 by Prashant Gupta, Sahradayi Modi, Rahul Ranjan, Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, and Ranjeet Pratap Singh. It started as an online reading-writing platform in Indian languages that now has over 3.7 lakh writers and 30 million monthly active readers in 12 Indian languages. Over the last 18 months, Pratilipi has launched two new products; Pratilipi FM and Pratilipi Comics, and acquired two companies; IVM Podcast and The Write Order. It has also started partnering with the ecosystem partners to bring engaging, high-quality literary content in other formats such as traditional books, web series, and animation. With the KRAFTON investment, Pratilipi and KRAFTON will also start working on finding the best Pratilipi stories that can be translated into globally successful gaming franchises.

Ranjeet Pratap Singh, CEO, Pratilipi said, “At Pratilipi, our vision has always been to democratize storytelling across languages, geographies, and formats. Over the last 12-18 months we have seen a lot of progress, expanding into some new formats as well as finding newer ways for our creators to be successful. We are both pleased and privileged to partner with KRAFTON, who shares our love for great stories and IP. We can’t wait to work together with KRAFTON and our other investors on the next phase of our journey to take our stories and our storytellers to a much wider audience across the globe.”

Sean Hyunil Sohn, Head of KRAFTON’s India Division said, “It is exciting to see the growth of Indian local IPs in online literature, comics, and audio platform in Pratilipi, which is already the largest player in India in multiple categories. With Pratilipi already having a multilingual platform for online literature, it is poised to become one of the strongest players in emerging markets in the future. KRAFTON believes in the long-term potential of local Indian IPs that can be successful not just in India but globally as well across formats including literature, comics, and gaming and our investment in Pratilipi is another step in realizing that vision.”