It was in April 2022 that digital storytelling group Pratilipi introduced bringing Westland Books below its wings. Gautam Padmanabhan, former CEO of Westland Books, turned the enterprise head of the publishing division at Pratilipi, and since then, there was no turning again. The platform, based in 2014 by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, who can also be the CEO of Pratilipi, has now stepped into the world of filmmaking. It not too long ago introduced a serious take care of Newcomers Initiative (a platform for brand spanking new expertise, together with actors, singers, writers, and technicians throughout the nation, led by main filmmakers) and Collective Artists Community (expertise administration company) to create content material in varied codecs and a number of languages and supply content material from their treasure of literary best-sellers to filmmakers throughout the nation.
Pratilipi now has books, on-line literature, comics, podcasts, audiobooks, and tales ready to be informed onscreen, below its umbrella.
In an unique interview with THE WEEK, Ranjeet Pratap shares his enlargement plans:
How did the partnership with the Newcomers Initiative come by means of? Do you now plan to department right into a manufacturing home as nicely with this?
We now have at all times labored in the direction of bringing tales out to individuals in a number of codecs with none barrier of medium, language or geography. Final yr we began having conversations with a number of manufacturing homes, writers and administrators to deliver out such tales collectively. That’s after we met producer Mahaveer Jain (who’s behind the Newcomers Initiative). After a number of conversations, we realised that each of us had an analogous imaginative and prescient of sharing one of the best Indian tales with our viewers and determined to work collectively as part of the Newcomers initiative.
As of now, we’re focusing extra on partnerships with manufacturing homes which have already created a mark within the business. We need to leverage our IPs and their abilities to supply some nice works.
How will content material sharing work between the 2 of you? Will you be additionally cracking books to display offers in addition to offering scripts to filmmakers by means of NI?
Mahaveer Jain Movies and Pratilipi are working collectively to shortlist one of the best tales from Pratilipi’s huge catalogue of over 10 million tales in a number of languages. These tales embrace these revealed on Pratilipi’s literature, comics and audio platforms in addition to books revealed by Westland Books. We’ll additional develop these shortlisted tales after which look to supply them into audio-visual reveals.
How will new and rising artists profit from this?
The thought behind the Newcomers Initiative is to democratise our leisure business for various professions, together with actors, administrators and writers. From Pratilipi’s perspective, this may present our creators a bigger viewers in addition to higher monetisation and profession alternatives.
You lately tied up with Juggernaut Productions to churn out OTT reveals. Has any script been finalised? What are your plans below the partnership?
We now have already shortlisted one story working with Juggernaut productions and are actively shortlisting extra tales within the close to future. Our hope is that Pratilipi and Juggernaut Productions will collectively develop and produce many nice internet reveals within the coming years.
What style of content material are you curious about bringing out by means of the 2 initiatives? Are you open to collaborating with extra productions to churn out cinematic, internet reveals content material?
Pratilipi has maybe the biggest IP catalogue in India with over 10 million tales revealed throughout 12 languages and lots of of genres. We’re pretty versatile and open minded by way of the genres and can choose the tales which might be more than likely to enchantment to a broader viewers. We’re already collaborating with completely different companions throughout completely different codecs, together with internet reveals, and are trying ahead to collaborating with many extra over the approaching years.
What sort of funding are you pouring into for creating content material?
Pratilipi’s imaginative and prescient is to construct the world’s largest built-in storytelling platform. Whereas we are able to’t touch upon the quantity of the funding in content material improvement, we are able to share that we now have already invested in creating lots of of comics, 1000’s of audio-books and podcasts and over a dozen audio-visual reveals.
Is it possible that you’ll arrange your individual manufacturing as nicely within the close to future? Other than books, content material is what do you assume will be branched into at Pratilipi?
We now have at all times stated Pratilipi shouldn’t be a publishing firm or a e book firm. Relatively we’re an IP ecosystem firm. Pratilipi’s whole technique will be summed up as: construct platforms or merchandise the place anybody can share their tales with the remainder of the world in any format, language or geography. Construct instruments to establish one of the best of those tales. Leverage these tales into all of the codecs, languages and geographies. We count on to take part in all of the codecs the place IP is on the core of the enterprise mannequin together with video games, animation, merchandising and so on.
What sort of enlargement are you eyeing? In a short while, Pratilipi has branched into a number of completely different classes of content material. What subsequent?
We consider that we now have simply began working in the direction of our imaginative and prescient of democratising storytelling, ranging from India for the entire world. Over the approaching years, we intend to go deeper into the codecs and languages that we have already got a presence in in addition to broaden into newer codecs as applied sciences together with generative AI evolve. A few of the extra apparent codecs will embrace animated movement comics, interactive video games and so on. We now have additionally began increasing to different international locations and can double on international enlargement over the following 5 to 10 years.
