How storytelling platform Pratilipi scripted a rare hit

“There were days when I’d start a book post lunch and finish it by midnight," he recalls.

New to reading, Agarwal was surprised to discover the addictive joy in captivating stories and the fictional world of romance and love stories. Soon, Agarwal took a plunge and decided to publish his own stories on the platform, a transition quite common on Pratilipi which has an active community of 1.5 million writers and 6.5 million monthly readers.

The startup is a user-generated content platform that allows authors to publish their long-form content in multiple Indian languages. Founded in 2014 and backed by investors like Tencent, Nexus Ventures and Alteria Capital, Pratilipi recently reached a milestone of being cash-flow positive in July 2024.

Pratilipi’s revenue in 2023-24 rose by 66% to ₹58 crore, from ₹35 crore the year before.The net loss narrowed by 62% to ₹58 crore last year. Overall, the company has raised $80 million in funding over seven rounds.

But the company cannot be measured by its finances alone. In the era of 15-second reels and waning attention spans, Pratilipi’s quest to foster a culture of reading long-form regional literature stands out in India’s content ecosystem—an ecosystem that has seen a massive rise and crash in the last half-decade. Several short video apps that emerged in the last few years tanked while some like Moj, Josh and MXtakatak saw mergers. Popular live-streaming apps disappeared after the China ban, while Koo, an Indian version of Twitter (now X), shut shop earlier this year citing a lack of funding or acquisition interest. While these platforms spent heavily on customer acquisition and creator rewards, some failed to take off and others are still struggling to retain users and build sustainable communities.

One of the reasons for Pratilipi’s survival in tough market conditions has been its singular focus on long-form content. While other platforms tried to cash in on the market frenzy of multiple formats like short videos and bite-sized content, Pratilipi stuck to its core offering of in-depth, engaging stories in regional Indian languages. This focused effort has helped the platform build a loyal fanbase of millions of readers—primarily women aged between 18-35 years.

“Long-form storytelling will never go out of fashion," says Ranjeet Pratap Singh, founder of Pratilipi. Singh’s journey with Pratilipi is rooted in his conviction and confidence that good stories will always find consumers. That said, Pratilpi’s journey hasn’t always been smooth.

Wattpad’s playbook

Before founding Pratilipi in 2014, Singh worked as an area sales manager with Vodafone. In his venture, he wasjoined by Sahradayi Modi, who also worked at Vodafone, and Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Singh’s batchmate from an MBA school in Delhi.There were two other co-founders— Prashant Gupta and Rahul Ranjan—who left Pratilipi a few years ago to pursue other ventures.

In 2014, when Pratilipi launched, Wattpad, the Toronto-based self-publishing platform, was already recognized among the hottest digital media companies. A rage among teen girls, Wattpad, in its eighth year of running, had attained a cult-like status and began monetization in 2014 after reaching 25 million monthly active users. Borrowing several pages from Wattpad’s playbook, Singh says he knew this was a game of patience and execution.

“Our first major challenge was to build demand and supply—a classic chicken and egg problem," says Singh. Pratilipi chose to focus on fixing the supply side first. The company reached out to authors through various channels, imploring them to get published on the platform. Writers such as Abhidha Sharma and Jitendra Jeetu were approached. Despite being published, these authors were having difficulty reaching a wide readership.

To build an initial content library, the company also picked up a few hundred Indian language titles that were available in the public domain. This strategy, aped from Wattpad’s playbook, helped the company get the initial traction and readers.

Eventually, though, the platform had to prove its merit in the original content market. Singh recalls placing a great emphasis on prioritizing its writers and their experience on the platform. Pratilipi introduced initiatives such as workshops for new writers, fellowships for seasoned authors, author chat rooms and a feedback loop between readers and writers.

“One of our biggest initial platform challenges was supporting Indian languages," says Singh. Fortunately, the launch and adoption of the Google Indic keyboard took the load off a tech problem for the company. Pratilipi stories are currently available in 12 Indian languages, including Punjabi, Odia and Bengali. Malayalam and Marathi stories are read the most.

The highest form of gratification for writers, though, comes from a large reader community. To fix this, the company aggressively marketed through Facebook ads. Authors were also encouraged to share their stories within their network. Community initiatives like chat rooms for authors helped build user retention.

All these efforts made traditional book publishers sit up and take notice.

“Pratilipi’s success in enabling online reading habits has been an eye-opener, changing the perception of traditional publishers," says Gautam Padmanabhan, chief executive of Westland Books, a company Pratilipi acqui-hired in April 2022 after Amazon announced that it was shutting down the publishing house.Acqui-hire is the practice of buying a company to access employees and their skills.“This has forced us to rethink our approach to digital publishing," Padmanabhan added.

Early investors, meanwhile, believed in the monetization potential of the platform. Nexus Ventures was one of them. Pratik Poddar, partner at the venture capital firm, explains that their initial investment was driven by the founders’ passion for creating a literature-focused platform in India. However, the global trend of users paying for long-form content and the potential to monetize intellectual property, as seen in the West and China, solidified their decision to invest.

Pay to read

For the longest time, the platform was free; authors weren’t paid. This changed in 2020 when Pratilipi introduced a premium app where subscriptions cost ₹150 a month or ₹1,500 a year. In addition, there is also a ‘Superfan’ subscription where readers can subscribe to specific authors for ₹25 a month or ₹250 a year.

The app currently has 400,000 monthly paying users.Pratilipi authors now get paid based on engagement generated by paid users on the app, similar to Spotify.

By default, writers own the intellectual property for any story they publish on the platform. However, the company also acquires a small number of stories that it feels can work across various formats such as audio and web series. Authors still retain a share of the revenue generated from these formats.

Unlike traditional publishing, Pratilipi follows a chapter-based approach. This model,where authors can publish a chapter of a book, instead of an entire story together, encourages regular writing and allows authors to receive ongoing feedback on the plot twists and turns of their narratives.

Shelja Shrivastava,who writes in Hindi, is among the top authors on Pratilipi. She recalls hiring an external editor to proofread and edit her story chapters.

“I wasn’t getting paid for my stories back then, but I was willing to spend on an editor because I didn’t want to publish a shoddy story," says Shrivastava, adding that user feedback was paramount to her.

A part-time professor and homeopathic doctor, Shrivastava, on good days writes anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 words over a couple of hours and makes about ₹35,000 per month through the platform. When she is not as active, her earnings drop to ₹20,000 a month.

Popular among the genre of social issues and romance, Shrivastava has built a community of 30,000 followers and 27 million impressions on the platform.

Time to buy

2020 was also when the company pressed the accelerator on diversification. Inorganic growth was in the offing.

Pratilipi expanded into audiobooks and comics. That year, it acquired IVM Podcasts, a podcast platform. Pratilipi FM, the company’s audiobook platform, now has 170,000 monthly active listeners, while Pratilipi Comics, which offers digital comics in six Indian languages, has over 80,000 monthly active readers.

The Westland acqui-hire, meanwhile, gave the company expertise in physical publishing. And Westland gained from the digital publishing expertise Pratilipi built over the years. Since the partnership, Westland has adaptedThe Habit Coach, a podcast on the platform, into a book. It also adapted Ruskin Bond’sTales From My Heart into a comic book.

Six months to live

For Pratilipi, building the demand and supply side meant heavy losses—the runway appeared short at a time when the startup world was grappling with a funding winter.

Towards the end of last year, Pratilipi faced a financial crisis with depleting funds and a runway of just six months. Reports highlighted news of attrition and layoffs along with the founders foregoing salaries; employee pay cheques got delayed.

While the company’s operational costs were relatively low, thanks to user-generated content, marketing expenses had consumed a significant portion of their budget. Marketing costs totalled ₹41 crore in 2022-23, far ahead of its revenue of ₹35 crore.

To stabilize the company, marketing costs were significantly cut next year—down to ₹6 crore, or about 10% of revenue in 2023-24. The cuts in marketing affected new signups and monthly active users, but these measures were essential to survival, says Singh.

During this period, the revenue from Pratilipi’s literature segment remained strong, aiding the company to stay afloat and even grow. In January 2024, the literature segment became cash flow positive, marking a turning point. By July, Pratilipi achieved overall cash flow positivity.

Nonetheless, Singh admits to making decisions that have hurt revenue growth. For instance, the Pratilipi app doesn’t have an erotica category—although there is plenty of romance—because many writers on the platform insisted on “keeping the platform family-friendly."

The next chapter

While erotica is an opportunity lost, intellectual property licensing is emerging as a significant revenue source for the company, one that can provide a solid financial foundation for the future.

In the last few years, Pratilipi titles likeLove Biye Aaj Kal,Imlie andDehati Ladke have been adapted into TV and web series.Dehati Ladke is also on its way to be a comic.

Global trends indicate that stories that work in one medium often tend to perform well in others.For instance, the release of TV shows based on books increases the sales of books. Pratilipi wants to capitalize on this trend by expanding its intellectual property across various formats. This move positions them to better compete in the regional content market.

The platform charges a flat fee of approximately ₹10-15 lakh for a story adaptation or 1-2% of the production budget. Alternatively, Pratilipi works with partners to co-develop screen adaptations, charging a fee in the range of ₹20-50 lakh alongside a share of the production budget.

The startup is partnering with TV studios and production houses, like Disney Star and Amazon, to adapt its stories into web series and movies.

Singh announced that as the company prepares for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2026, it plans to intensify its efforts in intellectual property licensing and expand into the Middle East and the US markets.

International expansion is crucial considering the limitations of the Indian regional language market. Pratilipi’s primary audience—non-English readers from smaller towns—are cost-conscious consumers. While loyal, they are accustomed to making smaller purchases. For the startup to reach the next level, it needs to significantly expand its user base, say industry watchers. Raising subscription prices would be counterproductive. Instead, the company needs to reach a wider audience and increase page views, following a similar monetization strategy to Facebook.

Whether Pratilipi can replicate the money-making model of Facebook, or the success story of Wattpad, will depend on its future execution and the ability to deliver on its promises. Singh believes he can.

“Great stories travel across formats," he says, adding that everyone in the consumer tech business is vying for user attention and time. “Our competition is to be consistently better than Candy Crush."