Airtel picks up stake in Juggernaut

NEW DELHI: Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Monday said it has acquired a "strategic" stake in Juggernaut Books, a digital platform for amateur writers.

The investment is in line with its endeavour to build an open content ecosystem and bring world-class digital content to its customers, the company said in a statement.

Juggernaut Books allows people to discover and read high quality, affordable books and to submit amateur writing, it said.

"The investment from Airtel will enable Juggernaut to ramp up content acquisition, digital marketing and prepare for a subscription offering launch in the next few months," the statement said.

Airtel did not disclose the investment details.

"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," Bharti Airtel Chief Financial Officer Badal Bagri said. Juggernaut CEO Simran Khara said the partnership with Airtel will allow the company to expand its distribution manifold.

Juggernaut's former investors include Infosys co-founder and current chairman Nandan Nilekani and Boston Consulting Group India CEO Neeraj Aggarwal. Launched in April 2016, the platform has close to a million downloads across Android and iOS smartphones.

The writer's platform, launched in May this year, has received about 500 stories with nine of them securing publishing contracts. Its catalogue includes authors like Twinkle Khanna, Arundhati Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sunny Leone and others.