Stories lurk in every corner of this country. Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, co-founder of Pratilipi, a self-publishing platform in various Indian languages, agrees. “India is a country of storytellers. We have given some of the greatest epics to the world — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and also the Vedas, Ramcharitmanas , Aimperum Kappiyangal , Ponniyin Selvan among others.”
Unfortunately, many of these stories remain untold because of a communication gap. “Today, there is a dearth of vernacular content that is being read in this country. It is not that we don’t have excellent writers or interested readers. The problem is that there is no platform connecting the two,” Sankaranarayanan says.
According to him, people who know English use the Internet regularly, “More than 70 million Indians already access the Internet in vernacular languages — and this number is set to grow exponentially. Yet apart from news, there is a dearth of vernacular content.”
That was the reason Pratilipi was created. “All of us five co-founders share something in common; we were all born in India’s smaller towns and villages and then went on to study from some of the best colleges and work in some of the world’s best companies. So, we have all seen the language divide between the two sides of India,” says Sankaranarayanan, adding that in the eight months since its inception, the start-up has already seen more than 550 writers from eight countries publishing close to 3,500 pieces of content.
The founding team, also including Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Rahul Ranjan, Prashant Gupta and Shally Modi, according to Sankaranarayanan, is a strongly knit one constantly working on what they offer. “We are currently working on our Android app, on making the reading and writing experience even better and are also looking forward to launching in other Indian languages soon. Pratilpi hopes to connect over 10,000 authors with over 10 million readers by the end of next year.”
