Prelipi, an Indian startup that operates an online storytelling platform to enable writers to share their work in a variety of formats, said on Wednesday that it had spent $48 million on Crafton’s leadership. South Korean gaming giant Krafton led the Series D round for a seven-year-old Bangalore-based startup, raising its date to $78.8 million.
Existing investors include Omidia Network India as well as Ranjit Pratap Singh, CEO of Pratilipi, Hemesh Singh, and Gaurab Munjal of Unakademi, Nishith Rastogi of Loks, Bidit Atray of Mysore, Mekin Maheshwari of Udham and Amit Agarwal of Nobro. Copy started its journey as an online reading and writing platform, where writers shared their stories in different languages of India.
Singh, who previously worked as an essay reader of Indian literature and worked at Vodafone, said the idea at the time was to create a platform where quality linguistic essays could be hosted and shared in Indian languages, with only a rare presentation on the web with Singh TechCrunch. In an interview, start transcribing. Since then the platform has ballooned to become the market leader. Today, more than 370,000 authors on the platform share their work in a dozen languages, and more than 30 million readers browse through it every month to read their work.
These authors can choose to share their work with readers for free or for a subscription charge. But increasingly there is one more opportunity to monetize their work. Copy – which has expanded into book publishing, audio and comics in recent years – uses proprietary algorithms to identify stories that believe it could turn into a book or web series and buy the authors IP.
The startup has signed several partnerships with industry players, including the giant on-demand video streaming service MX Player, which earlier this year carried the replica show “Midnight Lily.” “We were part of the story of replication growth from the very beginning,” said Pratik Poddar, principal of Nexus Venture Partners, an early supporter of the report. “Over the years, we’ve witnessed the team’s deep product focus, a passion for creators to succeed, and a deep appreciation for IP monetization of extensible content across a variety of formats.”
