Exclusive: Tencent leads Rs 76 Cr in Pratilipi’s ongoing Series C round

Audio and video-focused vernacular storytelling platform Pratilipi has raised Rs 76 crore in its Series C round led by Tencent. Existing backers Omidyar Network, Shunwei Capital and Nexus Venture Partners have also participated in the new round.

The fresh financing has come for the Bengaluru-based firm after a year. It had raised Rs 105 crore in its Series B round led by Chinese VC firm Qiming Venture Partners. The round seems to be an ongoing one and Pratilipi is likely to raise more capital.

According to regulatory filings, Pratilipi has allotted 4,479 Series C CCPS and 1 equity share at a price of Rs 1, 69,846 each share to raise the aforementioned sum. While Tencent’s European cloud arm has put in Rs 57.4 crore, Shunwei invested Rs 4.31 crore.

ON Mauritius (Omidyar Network) has poured in Rs 4.31 crore while Nexus Venture Partners have contributed Rs 1.8 crore to the company’s Series C round. Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL) is a new investor with an infusion of Rs 1.8 crore. It’s worth noting that Times Internet, the digital arm of BCCL, had backed Pratilipi in its Series A round.

In the latest financing round, the company’s share price has jumped 2.05 times as compared to its Series B round. As per Entrackr’s calculation, the estimated valuation of Pratilipi has also doubled to Rs 716.5 crore post-investment, from its valuation of  Rs 342 crore in the last round in June 2019.

The self-publishing platform had raised its first VC round in February 2018 led by Omidyar. 

Pratilipi primarily focuses on text and audio storytelling in Indian languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and seven others. As per its website, the company has 100,000 writers, 7.2 million readers and 800K stories.

With the effect of Jio and penetration of smartphones among vernacular language speakers, companies such as Pratilipi, ShareChat, Bytedance’s Helo and YourQuote have gained significant users and popularity. In January, Pratilipi claimed that one billion stories had been read on its app since its inception.

Founded by Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Rahul Ranjan, Sahradayi Modi, Prashant Gupta and Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Pratilipi competes with ShareChat, Helo, YourQuote, and Matrubharti among a few others.