Vernacular publishing platform Pratilipi has acquired Mumbai based podcast company IVM Podcasts. The deal marks Pratilipi’s first-ever acquisition and will give the Tencent backed startup a major push into the fast-growing Podcast market.
Talking to Techpluto, Pratilipi’s co-founder and CEO Ranjeet Pratap Singh claimed this to be an asset acquisition. He said that that all the assets of IVM Podcasts as well as their entire team have already joined the company. However, he refused to give any financial details about the deal.
Going by the sheer details that are coming out, this acquisition comes across more like an acquihire even though concerned parties are not openly talking about it.
Ranjeet has informed on his personal Twitter handle that IVM Podcasts will operate as a standalone vertical.
Pratilipi already has a presence in the podcast space with its Andriod app Pratilipi FM. Pratilipi FM allows its users to listen to more than 1,000 audio stories in 8 different Indian languages. Users can also download these stories and listen to them offline.
Amit Doshi and Kavita Rajwade founded IVM Podcasts in 2015. It offers podcast shows in several niches including sports, style, pop culture so and so forth.
To the best of our knowledge, IVM Podcasts has till date never raised any external funding.
During the last few years, podcast market has been booming globally. However, in India this market is still in the nascent stage and is yet to achieve maturity.
Meanwhile, 2020 is proving to be a good year for Pratilipi despite the threat of coronavirus looming large on Indian startups. Earlier this year, the company bagged INR 76 Cr in a fresh round led by Chinese tech giant Tencent.
In the ensuing months, the company also announced that its monthly active users (MAU) have crossed over 20 Mn. The 20 Mn MAU included company’s all core products that are available on Android, IOS and web.