Participated · Series B · Jun 2019

Pratilipi operates an online storytelling platform where writers publish work in a dozen Indian languages and readers consume content across text, audio, comics and book-publishing formats. The platform hosts over 370,000 writers and attracts more than 30 million readers each month. Writers can publish for free or behind subscription, and Pratilipi uses proprietary algorithms to identify IP it believes can be turned into books or web series and buys that IP from creators. The company has expanded into audio and podcasts (it acquired IVM Podcasts late last year) and has partnered with industry players such as MX Player. Pratilipi plans to broaden partnerships, invest in an in-house publishing stack, develop stories with gaming partner Krafton for global franchises, and pursue international expansion to reach creators and readers outside India. Financially, the company recently raised $48 million, bringing its total to-date funding to $78.8 million. Pratilipi is a storytelling platform focused on text and audio content in Indian languages, described by its CEO as a 'YouTube for writers'. The company reports more than 100,000 active writers and over 5.2 million monthly active readers, with average session times of about 53 minutes on its app and 15 minutes on the web. Pratilipi currently serves no ads and writers do not have direct monetization; CEO Ranjeet Pratap Singh intends to change this with the new capital. The company plans to begin purchasing rights to some stories and help writers secure deals with movie and web-series studios and publishing houses, and will invest significantly in engineering to improve story recommendations. It aims to capture growth among new internet users in India who prefer vernacular content and cites network effects as barriers to entry. The five-year-old startup has raised about $21 million to date. Pratilipi operates a self-publishing platform focused on Indian-language content, enabling professional and hobbyist writers to publish books, stories and essays in eight Indian languages. The company says its platform has seen over 80 million content pieces read, with more than 150,000 pieces published by over 22,000 authors. The team is 31 people and the product records users spending about 35 minutes a day reading across web and mobile. Pratilipi is not generating meaningful revenue currently and is treating monetization as a longer-term priority while it experiments with models. Management plans to monetise later via a small share of premium content (5–10% of content) and by licensing valuable IP. The company intends to use new funding to strengthen product, technology and data-science teams and to add more languages and content formats.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2019

Progcap provides revolving credit lines and financial tooling to small and medium retailers across India, serving more than 700,000 merchants in hundreds of cities and towns. The startup extends revolving credit lines of roughly $10,000–$12,500 to individual retailers and says the merchants it serves have annual cash flows around $125,000. Progcap uses its own underwriting technology and access to retailers’ financial data to assess creditworthiness, and offers tools to check account statements and invoices, make online payments, and track disbursals. In the past four years it has disbursed about $1 billion to retailers and is on track to disburse a similar amount this year. Progcap aims to become a full-stack, retailer-focused digital bank that digitizes, automates and eases capital movement across the supply chain. Progcap is a tech-enabled lending platform that provides quick, flexible, collateral-free working capital to last-mile retail businesses. The company models small-retailer risk using non-traditional data to create credit scores for customers who are often excluded from traditional finance; over half of its customers are new to the credit ecosystem. Founded in 2017 by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra and based in Delhi, Progcap focuses on retailers in Tier II, III and IV towns. It plans to use the recent funding to scale its Last Mile Retailer Finance facility and expand affordable, timely credit access. The founders say they are working to integrate millions of unplugged retailers into the formal economy, and investors note the approach can deliver value across the supply chain from brands and distributors to retailers.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2015

Pavitra Retail runs JoybyNature, a Delhi-based e-commerce marketplace for organic and natural products. The site offers about 10,000 products from trusted brands, provides expert advice through live chats, and aims to educate consumers on health-related issues. Founded in early 2014, the platform works with over 300 vendors and reported gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 1.7 crore in 2014–15. It receives over 65% of orders from states outside North India and the company cites a potential $10 billion addressable market for organic and natural products in India. The company plans to use recent funding to ramp up technology and marketing, hire senior-level talent, and launch a private label. Equity Crest served as financial advisor for the fundraise.