New Delhi: Bharti Airtel Ltd, India’s largest telecom service provider, on Monday said that it has acquired a strategic stake in digital publishing platform Juggernaut Books. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The investment is in line with Airtel’s endeavour to build an open content ecosystem and bring digital content to its customers. The funding from Airtel will enable Juggernaut to ramp up content acquisition, digital marketing and prepare for a subscription-led offering in the next few months.

“Juggernaut is an exciting digital platform and complements our content vision. We look forward to working with them and supporting the next phase of their growth journey," said Badal Bagri, chief financial officer of Bharti Airtel. Chiki Sarkar, founder and publisher, Juggernaut Books, said: “Airtel has a great understanding of digital content consumption and we have much to learn and benefit from this strategic partnership."

Founded in September 2015, Juggernaut raised Rs15 crore from investors including Infosys Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Fab India promoter William Bissell and Boston Consulting Group’s India managing director Neeraj Aggarwal, among others.

Launched in April 2016, the platform has close to 1 million downloads across Android and iOS.

In May 2017, Juggernaut’s writers’ platform went live to offer amateur writers an opportunity to digitally publish their content and stand a chance to win publishing contracts. The writer’s platform in the past six months has received just under 500 stories with nine of them securing publishing contracts.

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