We are not a fan of e-paper, we prefer reading news stories right on the newspaper website or as RSS feeds. But that has not stopped Hyderabad-based Pressmart Media Ltd, a print-to-digital delivery service, from raising $6 Million in Series A funding from leading funds such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA IndoUS Ventures.
The funding will be used to expand the company's footprint globally and expand its global sales, marketing, and customer-support presence. The company has clients across 35 countries with over 350 print media customers. Sateesh Andra from DFJ and Vinod Dham from NEA- IndoUS will join the board of directors of Pressmart.
Pressmart offers SaaS (Software as a Service) based e-publishing and digitisation services such as epublishing, delivery, hosting, subscription management, online payment, ad serving and user intelligence. Pressmart provides solution for publishing electronic edition of journals, newspapers and magazine. They also provide solution for any other publication on multiple distribution channels like web, mobile, RSS, podcast, blogs, search engines, article directories and social networking sites, with integrated revenue and cost-saving capabilities. Some of its clients are Birmingham Post, CNBC Europe, the Sun, Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle, Indian Express, and Lokmat.
According to industry estimates, the worldwide print readership is in excess of 1.4 billion readers daily and the worldwide publications (including daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, large newspapers, community publications, journals, etc.) is in excess of 1.62 million. In India alone there are over 150,000 publications registered with RNI.
Pressmart has already converted 400 years of newspapers, magazines, books, research papers, hospital records, manuscripts and journals, apart from enterprise records, into future-proof digital content.
"Publications around the Globe are currently under tremendous pressure to increase their presence on the web and leverage new media/social media for content distribution. Pressmart's Platform offers publishers a strong ROI and additional means of revenue," said Sateesh Andra of DFJ.
"I am very excited about the opportunity to invest in Pressmart and help make it a leader in the e-publication space. As the world goes digital, there is unlimited opportunity to deliver content in variety of electronic devices," said Vinod Dham, Founding Managing Director of NEA-IndoUS Ventures.
