YourStory acquires e-book publisher Papyrus Editor

Online media firm YourStory Media Pvt Ltd has acquired Papyrus Editor, an e-book editing and publishing platform, for an undisclosed amount.

As part of the deal, Papyrus founder Gaurav Tiwari will join YourStory as tech lead and will work on technology products, including one for user-generated content, YourStory said.

Papyrus, founded in 2012, allows users to create e-books in a blog-post-like format. It supports PDF, EPUB and Kindle formats for the e-books. The company was backed by startup accelerator The Morpheus.

"We want everyone to be able to tell their stories. The acquisition of Papyrus is a step towards achieving this objective," said Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory.

YourStory was set up in 2008 to cover the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country. It raised under $5 million from Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, Kalaari Capital, former Infosys board member TV Mohandas Pai and Qualcomm Ventures in August this year.

Other deals in the digital publishing segment include the $3.25 million (Rs 22 crore) investment by media entrepreneur Raghav Bahl, who runs a digital content platform called The Quint, in Bangalore- and California-based data-driven publishing startup Quintype Inc. Quintype is a SaaS service platform to help run digital media businesses, including content creation and distribution, audience development and monetisation.

YourStory's offerings compete with some products of The VCCircle Network. The parent of VCCircle Network—whose businesses include subscription data products, events, training programmes and a subscription-led news website—was acquired by News Corp in March.