Content startup Pratilipi raises Rs 20 crore debt from Alteria Capital

Pratilipi has over 3.5 lakh writers who have published over 4.5 million stories in ten Indian languages. [Representative image: Unsplash]

Venture debt firm Alteria Capital has invested Rs 20 crore in regional language self-publishing platform Pratilipi, it said on June 28.

Founded in 2015 by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Rahul Ranjan, Sankarnarayan Devarajan, Sahradayi Modi and Prashant Gupta, Pratilipi is a online self-publishing and audiobooks portal that features stories in ten Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Urdu and English.

Pratilipi has over 3.5 lakh writers who have published over 4.5 million stories in ten Indian languages and has over 28.5 million monthly active readers on the platform. The startup has also launched sub-categories and products within the brand including Pratilipi literature, Pratilipi comics and Pratilipi FM. The comics and FM categories have over 8 lakh and 3 lakh active users respectively.

The debt will be used for marketing and expanding its user base.

“We have been exchanging thoughts around Pratilipi and its growth plans with Ankit and Vinod (Murali, co-founder of 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,” said Singh, co-founder and CEO at Pratilipi.

“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.

Alteria Capital raised Rs 1,325 crore for their second fund to provide loans for startups in April. Venture debt is a popular asset class for both investors and startups alike. Venture debt firms rely on cash flow from companies and their future equity funding for their debt to be paid back

Alteria’s other investments include cloud kitchen firm Rebel Foods, delivery platform Dunzo, lending startup BharatPe and e-commerce firm Dealshare.