Tencent leads $10 mn Series C round in self-publishing platform Pratilipi

Bengaluru-based Nasadiya Technologies, which owns self-publishing platform Pratilipi, has raised $9.7 million in a Series C funding round led by Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent Holdings, through its arm Tencent Cloud Europe.

Returning investors in the round include impact investor Omidyar Network India, venture capital firms Shunwei Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman and Company.

Of the total, around $7.6 million was infused by Tencent. In all the company issued 4,162 preference shares at 169,835.87 per share, totalling to Rs 70.7 crore, showed the company’s latest regulatory filings.

Since inception, Pratilipi has raised little over $20 million in funding, according to data available with VCCEdge. 

In June last year, the company raised $15 million (Rs 104 crore) in a Series B round led by Qiming Venture Partners with Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network India, Shunwei Capital, Contrarian Vriddhi Fund and WEH Ventures  

Founded in March 2014 by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Rahul Ranjan, Prashant Gupta and Sahradayi Modi, Pratilipi allows writers to publish their poems, stories and other literary works on the platform for free. It offers services in 12 languages – English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Oriya, Telugu, Punjabi and Kannada. 

The startup claims to have 72 lakh readers and 8 lakh stories written by a lakh writers, according to information on its website.

Shenzhen-based Tencent has investments in a substantial number of startups in India. Some of its prominent investments include business-to-business ecommerce platform Udaan, food delivery startup Swiggy and ed-tech major Byju’s. 

This is Tencent’s second investment this year. In January, it had led a $15 million Series A round in ed-tech platform Doubtnut.