Is Pratilipi’s Future In Physical Books?

How often does a digital media startup buy a publishing house? And even if it does, does this tech startup, with its engineers and product managers, ever truly think that its future will lie in physical books? 

Even as the whole world seems to want to pay for microdramas, Pratilipi’s biggest moat might well be its acquisition of Westland Books from Amazon in 2022. 

Since then Westland has become the second largest revenue contributor for the startup, which began life as a platform where Indians could post online stories in their regional languages.   

“Today, Westland and physical books are already our second largest revenue stream. I think it has a chance of becoming the single largest revenue contributor by FY27 or FY28,” says Ranjeet Pratap Singh, cofounder and CEO of Pratilipi. 

This was not supposed to happen. The future was meant to be digital, but that narrative has fallen flat after the correction in the funding outlook for digital media in India. As a result, Pratilipi turned to other avenues. Here’s how Pratilipi’s future is changing and how it’s shaking off the losses of the past. 

The Surge And The Slowdown

Founded in 2014, the first few years of Pratilipi involved the typical cycle of acquiring new users, trying to retain them and growing engagement. And in the initial few years, there was a real appetite for regional language media platforms that can serve the audience beyond the metros. 

By 2020, the platform had more than 20 Mn monthly active users and over 1 Lakh writers, yet Singh admitted that the startup had “no revenue model in place at all.”

As a result, a lot depended on VC funding. After raising a ₹105 Cr Series B in 2019 and a Krafton-led Series D in 2021 that valued it at about $265 Mn and took total funding to $78.8 Mn, the startup planned an ambitious IP expansion across audiobooks, comics, films, web series and games.

The 2022 funding winter, however, left Pratilipi with virtually no runway for about seven months. In FY23, it posted ₹35 Cr in revenue and a net loss of ₹152.6 Cr, forcing sharp cuts to marketing and IP spends, salary deferrals and a focus on cash preservation.

Post which the startup’s revenue rose to ₹57.8 Cr in FY24 and about ₹82 Cr in FY25, while losses narrowed to roughly ₹58 Cr and ₹33-34 Cr, respectively. The startup also became operationally cash-flow positive around mid-2024.

According to Singh, the crisis revealed that Pratilipi’s core business was driven by subscriber retention rather than user acquisition, with about 90% of revenue coming from renewals — a model that now underpins its broader content strategy.

The next few years would force a complete rethink. Pratilipi introduced subscriptions during the pandemic when funding prospects had slowed dramatically, raised emergency capital from founders and investors, and later secured a large round from Krafton. 

However, today, the startup looks very different. Pratilipi expects FY26 revenue of roughly ₹188 Cr from a mix of subscription-driven online literature or stories, physical books, podcasts, comics, IP licensing and microdramas. But the biggest push is coming from Westland Books.

The Pratilipi Revenue Story

Comics remain a relatively small but fast-growing category. Digital comics revenue is expected to exceed roughly ₹16-18 Lakh per month while growing at about 50% month-on-month, while physical comics distributed through Westland are already crossing roughly ₹1 Cr a month.

Looking ahead to FY27, internal projections point to literature revenue of roughly ₹160-170 Cr and Westland revenue of roughly ₹230 Cr. IP licensing has deliberately been left unforecast because individual deals can swing results by tens of crores depending on timing.

What’s notable is not just that Pratilipi survived the funding crunch, but how sharply it improved its unit economics afterwards.

In FY24, revenue from operations rose about 66% to ₹57.8 Cr, while losses fell 62% from ₹152.6 Cr to about ₹58 Cr.

By FY25, the startup says revenue climbed further to roughly ₹82 Cr while losses narrowed again to around ₹33-34 Cr, with the startup turning operationally cash-flow positive around mid-2024.

The explanation for that acceleration comes from the literature business, which is overwhelmingly driven by repeat, retention-based revenue rather than new-user acquisition.

According to Singh, roughly 90% of literature revenue comes from existing users re-subscribing rather than first-time purchases, with meaningfully high long-term retention even among cohorts that have been paying for three to four years.

Marketing spend, in this framing, mostly amplifies an already-large base of loyal users rather than serving as the primary growth engine, which is why the business could continue growing even when marketing budgets were reduced to near zero.

This retention-first philosophy extends to how Pratilipi handles subscriptions altogether.

The startup has deliberately avoided the increasingly common practice of offering heavily discounted introductory plans that automatically convert into much more expensive subscriptions. Instead, users see the full subscription price upfront and know exactly what they will be charged.

Singh expects FY27 group revenue to reach roughly ₹350-400 Cr while losses remain broadly stable in absolute terms.

The Westland Story: Books Shoring Up Books

One of the more unusual chapters in Pratilipi’s history is how it ended up owning one of India’s oldest publishing houses. 

Westland Books traces its roots back to 1962 (originally East West Books) and was acquired by the Tata Group’s Trent/Westside in 2008, before being bought by Amazon in 2017. 

In February 2022, Amazon abruptly shut Westland down entirely, and its dissolution by the end of March meant that Pratilipi’s lawyers did not have a long enough window to wrap up a complete acquisition of such an old company. 

Instead, Singh describes the deal as an “acqui-hire plus content giveaway”. 

Amazon let the Westland team go, and effectively handed over the back catalogue and author relationships at little to no cost to Pratilipi. 

Amazon’s only real constraint was hitting its self-imposed deadline, not maximising sale value. It’s not clear why Amazon rushed the deal but Pratilipi seems to have gained due to this decision. 

Authors and their existing contracts technically lapsed with the old Westland entity, and the new Pratilipi-backed venture had to re-sign authors it wanted to retain, but because of the obvious synergy, most of the imprints and senior staff carried over.

The growth since then has been dramatic. When Pratilipi took over, the Westland business was doing under ₹1 Cr a month (roughly ₹70-80 Lakh). 

As of the most recent month referenced, it’s grossing at least ₹13-13.5 Cr a month, with net revenue above ₹10 Cr, roughly a 13-15X increase, Singh told Inc42. 

Inc42 did not see audited financial statements backing these claims. 

The startup’s plan is to reach ₹40 Cr per month in revenue by the end of March 2027, a scale that would put it in the same league as Penguin, widely considered India’s largest publisher. 

Within Westland, growth is being driven by three areas: its legacy catalogue and new acquisitions, books adapted from popular Pratilipi web novels, and physical comics. The comics are created by Pratilipi’s in-house team and distributed through Westland’s print network.

For internal planning, the startup allocates about 70-80% of certain resources to the comics-led physical business and 20-30% to traditional publishing, though both operate under the same entity, Pratilipi Technologies.

Singh says the physical books market still has significant room to grow in India and around the world, and data backs him up to a certain extent. 

And this is why Pratilipi’s paradoxical bet on physical books allows it to sit out of the cashburn in India’s microdrama space. 

Why Pratilipi Is Avoiding The Microdrama Gold Rush

IVM Podcasts, one of India’s earliest and best-known podcast networks, was acquired by Pratilipi in 2020 as the startup’s first move beyond pure text. 

It remains a relatively small contributor to revenue, unlike Westland.

The more interesting (read: upside) piece for the startup’s topline is IP licensing. As of now, Pratilipi acts as a content studio/IP holder that licenses its best-performing stories to third parties for adaptation into other formats: TV shows, web series, films, and microdramas. 

This business is explicitly described as “lumpy”. Meaning, a single deal can be worth ₹20 Cr or more and can land in one quarter versus another. The startup has said it has roughly five TV shows and one web series already live based on its IP, with another 25-30 in various stages of development, a pipeline that should keep feeding this licensing revenue line, however unevenly, for years.

Notably, under this same business, it also signed a deal with TikTok to distribute 21 original Indian micro-dramas in markets like the US, Canada, Brazil, and Japan. 

Notably, India’s microdrama boom has been one of the fastest-moving stories in entertainment over the past 12-18 months. Industry estimates put the market at around $300 Mn currently, with projections (from investment firm Lumikai) of it reaching roughly $1.5 Bn by the end of 2026. 

The space is crowded with more than 70 platforms reportedly active or announced, including heavyweight, well-funded “demand-side” players including Amazon, JioHotstar, Sony, Zee, plus dedicated microdrama-first platforms like Pocket FM’s spinoffs, Story TV, Kuku, Sharechat’s QuickTV and newer entrants like Hyderabad’s Chai Bisket (which raised $5 Mn with Rana Daggubati and launched “Chai Shots 75”).

Pratilipi’s stated position, per Singh, was to deliberately avoid this “demand side” altogether. The founder’s reasoning is essentially a moat-and-capital argument: competing on the demand side means going head-to-head with companies that either have enormous war chests or, more importantly, already own free distribution.

For instance, Singh says Amazon doesn’t need to build a new app from scratch when it can bolt microdrama onto MX Player’s existing user base, and the same goes for JioHotstar. 

The Bet On IPs

Pratilipi, by contrast, doesn’t have “that much money” to sustain what the founder calls a multi-year “treadmill” of competing for attention and acquisition spend against players with structurally lower distribution costs. 

Instead, Pratilipi chose the supply side: producing and licensing microdrama content rather than operating a microdrama platform of its own. “This meant working with roughly 8-10 external production partners, where Pratilipi funds production and retains the IP and then licenses the finished shows to the various microdrama platforms and OTT players that do want the content,” Singh added. 

Because of this strategy, microdrama-related revenue is expected to remain modest, not more than roughly 10% of the literature business’s revenue in the near term, and the startup was late to even this supply-side push, as the first funding amount came in March only.

Further, there is also a content-tier logic at play. Singh argues that Pratilipi’s top-performing stories are reserved for higher-value formats like TV shows and films, because the budgets and ambitions of microdrama simply don’t match what those top stories deserve. 

Microdrama, in this view, is where the next tier of stories goes, not the crown jewels.

That said, the strategy has visibly evolved into something more formalised very recently. 

Pratilipi has built a large IP portfolio across OTT, television, microdramas, comics and audio. Some of its popular stories, such as Dehati Ladke and Midnight Lily, have been adapted for OTT platforms, while several titles are being developed for television with Disney Star.

Its microdrama catalogue includes Avnika Ki Shaadi, Mera Saath Do, Raavan, Boss Bahu and CEO Se Romeo. The startup also owns comics and graphic novel IPs such as The Story of Shiva, Hanuman, Betal Pacheesi and Being an Indian Teenager. In audio, fiction franchises like The Mafia King series and Devil’s Love have been expanded into audiobooks.

In April 2026, Pratilipi launched Double Tap Films, a dedicated, data-led microdrama studio built directly on top of its IP catalogue. 

The studio has acquired adaptation rights to roughly 35,000 Pratilipi stories and uses engagement data to identify which stories are most likely to work as vertical drama before a single frame is shot. 

According to the studio’s leadership, it can take an idea from “story” to finished, shootable screenplay in roughly 4-10 days, shoot a full 30-35 episode show in 2-3 days, and complete post-production in a week to ten days, with getting a complete show out the door in about two weeks. 

The studio’s debut slate spans Hindi, Bengali, Kannada and Gujarati and has already produced over 150 microdramas distributed across platforms including Amazon Prime Video, MX Player, Story TV, Hungama OTT, and others.

The clearest sign that this strategy is now paying off internationally: in late May 2026, Double Tap Films signed a one-year, non-exclusive licensing deal with TikTok, its first formal international content-distribution agreement, to stream 21 original Hindi-language microdrama series to audiences in the US, Canada, Brazil and Japan on a monthly revenue-share basis. 

It’s a notable validation of the “supply-side, IP-first” approach: rather than building a platform to compete with TikTok, Pratilipi is now one of TikTok’s content suppliers for an entirely new international audience.

Despite its divided focus between the IP business and the publishing business, Pratilipi is taking a road that few Indian startups have taken. It’s betting on verticals that seem antithetical to the tech promise, but in the age of media convergence, this might be one contrarian bet that actually delivers asymmetric returns. 

Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam 

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