[Funding alert] Indian language storytelling startup Pratilipi raises Rs 76 Cr in Series C round led by Tencent

Bengaluru-based Indian language storytelling startup Pratilipi, run by Nasadiya Technologies Private Limited, has raised Rs 76 crore in its Series C round of funding led by Tencent. 

According to RoC filings accessed by YourStory, existing investors Omidyar Network, Shunwei Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners have also participated in the round.

As per the filings, the company has issued 4,479 Series C CCPS and one equity share at a price of Rs 1, 69,846 per share to raise a total sum of Rs 76,09,09,497.60. Tencent’s European cloud arm has infused Rs 57.4 crore, while Shunwei Ventures, ON Mauritius (Omidyar Network) and Nexus Venture Partners have contributed Rs 5.38 crore, Rs 4.31 crore and Rs 1.8 crore respectively.

Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL) has also put in Rs 1.8 crore to the company’s Series C round that seems to be an ongoing one and is likely to raise more investment. 

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Last year, Pratilipi had secured $15 million in Series B funding led by Chinese VC firm Qiming Venture Partners. In 2018, the firm received $4.3 million in Series A round of funding led by Omidyar Network. 

Founded in 2014 by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Sahradayi Modi, Rahul Ranjan, and Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Pratilipi is an Indian language self-publishing platform that primarily focusses on text and audio storytelling. It has over 100,000 writers who have published over 800,000 stories in ten Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Telugu and English. The company claims to have over 7.2 million readers on its platform.

Pratilipi’s competitor ShareChat, also from Bengaluru, which has about 60 million monthly active users (MAUs), on Monday announced that it has acquired Memer, a platform for discovering and sharing of memes. ShareChat is available in 15 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi, Malayalam, Telugu, among others.