With 25 million readers across 12 Indian languages, Pratilipi has come a long way in terms of traction and adoption. One of the oldest regional language storytelling platform’s growth has also drawn venture capital attention and over the years the company has raised $79 million in total funding since its inception in 2014.
About 60% of its total capital – $48 million – was raised in a recently concluded Series D round. While the round was announced three weeks ago, Pratilipi didn’t disclose details such as valuation and break-up of the new round. Fintrackr has decoded these details through the company’s regulatory filings.
Pratilipi has allotted 10,510 Series D preference shares and 3 equity shares at an issue price of Rs 3,42,134.98 per share to raise Rs 359.7 crore or $48 million. Krafton led the Series D round with Rs 336.14 crore or $45 million whereas existing backer Omidyar participated with Rs 16.8 crore or $2.2 million. Venture debt firm Alteria Capital has invested Rs 3.5 crore or $470K.
Fourteen angel investors including Mekin Maheshwari, Sahil Barua, Kushal Sharma, Abhishek Goyal, Vidit Aatrey, Mohit Kumar, Hemesh Singh, Gaurav Munjal, Amit Aggarwal, Neetu Yadav and Rahul Chaudhary have invested Rs 2.34 crore or $300K collectively in this round.
Importantly, Partilip’s co-founder and chief executive officer Ranjit Pratap Singh has also invested Rs 92.6 lakh or $120K. According to Fintrackr’s estimate, the company has been valued in the range of Rs 1,970-2,000 crore or $265-270 million.
Following the series D round, Nexus Ventures remains the largest stakeholder controlling 19.10% stake in Pratilipi while Krafton has emerged as the second-largest stakeholder after acquiring 18.51% stake in the latest round. It’s worth noting that Nexus didn’t participate in this round.
Omidyar commands 14.20% stake in Pratilipi while QM 112 Limited owns 7.88%. Its Co-founders’ collective stake stands at 10.49% from 12.78% earlier.
Pratilipi focuses on text and audio storytelling in languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam It claims to have over 3.7 lakh writers and 30 million monthly active readers on its platform.
The company competes with ShareChat, Helo, YourQuote, and Matrubharti among a few others. Significantly, the company also released its first web series Midnight Lily which is streaming on MX Player and YouTube.
For the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2020, the company saw its revenue from operations grow YoY by 378.4% to Rs 5.5 crore. During the period, the company spent Rs 42.32 crore in total and lost Rs 36.76 crore in FY20.
