Storytelling has been a core part of the human experience for millennia as the format evolved from cave paintings and spoken word to modern literature, music and film. These developments were enabled by unique technologies and required expertise to create stories and reach audiences. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, modern software tools, and the connected nature of our world, it's now possible to reinvent storytelling and empower talent from all walks of life to reach a global audience. That's why we are excited to partner with Ali and his team at Inkitt on their mission to build a new kind of media platform for the modern age.
Inkitt started in 2015 with a humble mission -- to find undiscovered talent around the world and turn writers into globally successful authors. They first built a community of 1.5m avid readers from 160+ countries who've read over 300,000 stories written by 100,000 writers on Inkitt. The team then built tools to convert these stories into deeply immersive rich episodic content on their app, Galatea, which was launched in 2018. Now, more than 4 million episodes are read per month on Galatea. Episodes for their top seller, Millenium Wolves, have been read over 5M times.
What's more impressive than the engagement on this platform is the realization of Inkitt's mission. Millenium Wolves was written by Sapir Englard, a student from Israel, who has been using the royalties she's earned to finance her studies at the Berklee College of Music. The Arrangement, another best seller, was written by Soumiya Seemram Sahoo, who comes from a remote village in India where the female literacy rate is 64%. Her royalties have helped her family rebuild after a hurricane devastated their home in the Spring of this year.
The future of storytelling will be more immersive and rich than ever before and we're thrilled to help write the next chapter of Inkitt's story.
— ilya