Pratilipi, an Indian-language digital storytelling platform, announced on April 3 that it has secured $20 million in a Series E funding round. The company intends to use the capital to speed up its international growth, particularly focusing on the US market while also exploring new storytelling formats like animation and vertical drama shows.

Jungle Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Singapore, led the round. The round values Pratilipi at $100 million, a decrease from its previous valuation of $265 million. The funding includes $12 million in primary and $8 million in secondary investments.

Pratilipi has raised $108 million with this latest round from investors such as Krafton, Nexus Venture Partners, and Omidyar Network. The company anticipates this will be its final primary funding round before a potential public listing.

Pratilipi co-founder Ranjeet Pratap Singh said that Chinese investors Qiming Venture Partners and Shunwei Capital will exit the firm following this investment. “We wanted to clean our cap table before an IPO…We intend to go for an IPO sooner rather than later,” he said. Pratilipi has previously expressed its intention to go public in 2026.

“At Pratilipi, our mission has always been to empower storytellers and connect them with audiences worldwide,” Singh said. “As we continue to grow, our focus remains on creating a platform where every storyteller, regardless of language or medium, can find their voice and reach millions”.

Singh stated that Pratilipi recently launched its core online literature product in the United States and plans to gradually introduce other products to the country in the long term. He also highlighted that the company intends to establish a small regional team.

“We just launched two or three days ago and are still figuring things out. We’ll only know exactly how this will work after a few iterations. In the long term, we want it to be exactly like our literature business in India,” he said.

Pratilipi’s recent fundraising comes after a challenging period for the digital storytelling startup. The startup experienced a funding crunch that delayed salary payments for employees for some months. To manage this situation, the company reduced its marketing expenses by more than 90% and scaled back on intellectual property (IP) licensing, which required advance investments, according to Singh.

The company also shared that its core online literature business is now profitable and generating positive cash flow, with a monthly free cash flow of Rs 3 crore.

“Our literature business itself was fundamentally so good that all I had to do was not panic. Otherwise, literature itself pays off for everything else,” Singh said.

The company saw its revenue rise 65.8 per cent to Rs 57.8 crore in FY24 from Rs 34.9 crore in FY23, while its net loss shrank by 61.9 per cent to Rs 58.1 crore in FY24 from Rs 152.6 crore in FY23.

“With over 2 hours of daily engagement per user and a rapidly growing user base, Pratilipi has cracked the code to building something truly rare, with massive potential both in India and globally,” said Arpit Beri, Partner, India Investments, Jungle Ventures.“Ranjeet and the team have built a culturally resonant, creator-first platform unlocking the true power of vernacular storytelling,” he said.

The Bengaluru-based digital storytelling startup also mentioned that its audio vertical, Pratilipi FM, has started to “scale meaningfully, driven by increasing consumption among younger, mobile-first audiences”. The product competes with cross-town rivals such as Pocket FM and Kuku FM.