Indian language digital storytelling platform Pratilipi announced on April 3 that it has raised $20 million in a Series E funding round. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate its international expansion, particularly into the United States, and to explore new storytelling formats such as animation and vertical drama shows.
Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures led the funding round, which values the company at $100 million, a drop from its earlier valuation of $265 million. The round included $12 million in primary investment and $8 million in secondary investment.
With this fundraise, Pratilipi has raised a total of $108 million to date from investors such as Krafton, Nexus Venture Partners, and Omidyar Network. The company expects this round to be its final primary funding round ahead of a potential public listing.
Pratilipi co-founder Ranjeet Pratap Singh told Moneycontrol that Chinese investors Qiming Venture Partners and Shunwei Capital will be exiting the firm following this investment. "We wanted to clean our cap table before an IPO...We intend to go for an IPO sooner rather than later," he said. Pratilipi has previously expressed its intention to go public in 2026.
“At Pratilipi, our mission has always been to empower storytellers and connect them with audiences worldwide” Singh said "As we continue to grow, our focus remains on creating a platform where every storyteller, regardless of language or medium, can find their voice and reach millions"
US expansion
Singh said that Pratilipi launched its core online literature product in the United States a few days ago, with plans to extend other products to the country in the longer term. He also mentioned that the company will set up a small team in the region.
"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.
Pratilipi's latest fundraising comes after a particularly tough phase for the startup, marked by a funding crunch that resulted in delayed salary payouts for employees in certain months. To navigate this situation, Pratilipi cut down its marketing costs by over 90 percent and slowed down intellectual property (IP) licensing, where advance investment was needed, Singh said.
The company said that its core online literature business is now profitable and cash flow positive, generating Rs 3 crore every 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.
The company saw its revenue rise 65.8 percent to Rs 57.8 crore in FY24 from Rs 34.9 crore in FY23, while net loss shrank by 61.9 percent to Rs 58.1 crore in FY24 from Rs 152.6 crore in FY23.
Pratilipi's six business units
Pratilipi was founded in 2014 by Singh, Rahul Ranjan, Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Prashant Gupta, and Sahradayi Modi. It currently operates six business units - the eponymous online literature platform which has 1.6 million writers in 12 Indian languages and over 12 million monthly active readers; audio content product Pratilipi FM; and online comics platform Pratilipi Comics.
The startup acquired Mumbai-based multilingual podcast network IVM Podcasts to foray into the online podcast market in 2020 and purchased publishing house Westland Books from Amazon to enter the traditional book publishing market in 2022. It also bought self-publishing platform The Write Order in 2021 to expand its repository of original stories.
Additionally, Pratilipi licenses its stories for adaptations into television and web series and movies among others. "About five TV shows and one web series have been launched based on our stories so far. There are another 25-30 shows which are under different stages of development" Singh said.
Read: Disney Star (JioStar) to adapt Pratilipi's stories as television shows for its TV, digital platforms
Online literature is Pratilipi's flagship product which generated Rs 7.6 crore in revenue in March 2025, Singh said. The freemium platform allows Indian-language writers to share their stories on the platform and monetise it through subscription fees from readers.
While many stories on the platform are available for free, some stories are locked under the company's subscription programme Pratilipi Premium. For these stories, people can either read one chapter a day or subscribe to 'binge-read' the chapters.
Pratilipi charges Rs 149 for monthly subscriptions, Rs 749 for six months, and Rs 1,499 per year. Users can also purchase virtual coins to unlock specific parts of a story. In addition, people can also purchase author-level subscriptions on Android that will provide them access to the premium stories of the subscribed authors.
"With over 2 hours of daily engagement per user and a rapidly growing user base, Pratilipi has cracked the code to building something truly rare, with massive potential both in India and globally" said Arpit Beri, Partner, India Investments, Jungle Ventures.
"Ranjeet and the team have built a culturally resonant, creator-first platform that’s unlocking the true power of vernacular storytelling" he said.
The Bengaluru-based startup also mentioned that its audio vertical, Pratilipi FM, has started to "scale meaningfully, driven by increasing consumption among younger, mobile-first audiences". The product competes with cross-town rivals such as Pocket FM and Kuku FM.
Over the past year, Pocket FM parent firm Pocket Entertainment has also expanded its offerings by launching an online novel reading platform called Pocket Novel, and a webcomics platform called Pocket Toons.
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