Ahmedabad-based eBook publisher Matrubharti, on Monday, said it has raised a seed funding of Rs 20 lakh from Viridian Capital.

Matrubharti offers a publishing platform to new and aspiring writers in regional languages by taking content directly from authors and publishing it as an eBook.

The amount will be used for investment in technology and expanding the team. Incubated at the Espark-Viridian Accelerator Centre at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), Gandhinagar, Matrubharti has more than 1,800 authors registered and has published 4,350 eBooks so far, the publisher said.

A recent survey by Nielsen India revealed that India’s book market, currently the sixth largest in the world at Rs 26,100 crore, is likely to touch Rs 73,900 crore by 2020. The survey says that more than 70 per cent of the publishers in India have digitised their content to produce eBook versions thereby reaching the target customers through a digital medium, Mahendra Sharma, Co-Founder, Matrubharti, said.

Commenting on the seed funding and future of digital content, he said, the Viridian Capital investment is a testimony that Matrubharti has a business model which is likely to grow at a healthy rate. The Matrubharti platform is its unique selling proposition among digital publishers.

“We have a premium subscription model through which readers can download any number of eBooks during a particular period, which reduces the cost of purchasing an eBook for readers”, Sharma added.

Matrubharti publishes over 450 eBooks every month with 7.5 lakhs eBooks downloaded so far. “Our growth rate is 20% month-on-month and we expect a similar growth over the next one year, as we believe that penetration of smart phones would increase the sales of eBooks going forward.”.

Published in six languages so far, Matrubharti plans to publish eBooks in 21 languages.

Matrubharti is a self-publishing platform and an app serving eBooks in Indian languages. It is the first of its kind app from India that takes content directly from authors and publishes it as an eBook. It uses patent pending low-cost technology for digital rights protected eBooks.

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