Content startup Pratilipi raises Rs 20 cr in debt from Alteria Capital

Pratilipi has over 350,000 writers who have published over 4.5 million stories in 10 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Urdu, and English among others.

Storytelling platform Pratilipi has raised Rs 20 crore in a venture debt round from Alteria Capital. Founded in 2015, Pratilipi primarily focuses on Indian languages. It has over 350,000 writers who have published over 4.5 million stories in 10 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Telugu, and English. The company has over 28.5 million monthly active readers on its platform. 

“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.

With a portfolio of companies such as Dealshare, BharatPe, Lendingkart, Zestmoney, Dunzo, and Portea, Alteria Capital has a corpus of Rs 2,300 crore across two funds. It recently raised commitments of Rs 1,325 crore from domestic investors for its second venture debt fund.  

“We have been exchanging thoughts around Pratilipi and our growth plans with Ankit and Vinod (of Alteria Capital) 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 Ranjeet Pratap Singh, cofounder, Pratilipi. The Bengaluru-based startup’s parent Nasadiya Technologies had last year raised over $9 million from Tencent, Omidyar Network and others.