India tech blog YourStory raises series A to build multilingual community

Indian media startup YourStory announced today that it secured an undisclosed amount in series A funding led by early stage fund Kalaari Capital. The round also saw participation from Qualcomm Ventures, T V Mohandas Pai, and Ratan Tata.

Started in 2008, Bangalore-headquartered YourStory is a blog on entrepreneurs with a staff of 50 across all departments. The startup claims to have reached 60 million engaged readers through 20,000 stories. It has sub-sites like HerStory, SocialStory, and YS TV.

With fresh funding, YourStory aims to launch a platform to allow users to publish stories in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Bangla, Kannada, Tamil, and Marathi. It will allow users to narrate their stories through text, voice, or video.

“We believe we are in the ‘transformative’ business, one story at a time. This power of transformation should be available not only to English language users but also to the millions of Indians who are coming online and are eager to communicate in their own language,” said YourStory founder Shradha Sharma.

Sharma, a history grad, has previously worked at CNBC TV18 as assistant vice president and at Times of India as brand advisor.

YourStory also counts research and consulting arm YS Research and startup database YS Pages among its holdings. It generates revenue from organizing events and through advertisements on its site.

YourStory competes with VC Circle’s startup news site TechCircle, which was acquired by News Corp earlier this year, and angel-backed Inc42.

It’s also up against Tech in Asia, which recently raised US$4 million from SB ISAT Fund and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and launched a community hub for readers to contribute.