# HOOKED

> HOOKED is a mobile entertainment company that pioneered "chat fiction" - bite-sized stories told as text-message conversations between characters, designed to be read in about five minutes. Built by husband-and-wife founders Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia under the company Telepathic Inc., the app turned suspense and horror into thumb-tapping cliffhangers and reached tens of millions of mostly teen and young-adult readers, repeatedly topping the App Store charts in dozens of countries.

- **Founded:** 2014
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Prerna Gupta (Co-founder & CEO), Parag Chordia (Co-founder & CTO)
- **Team size:** ~51 employees
- **Products:** HOOKED (chat fiction app), Freemium subscription, HOOKED 2.0 (user-generated stories), HOOKED TV, Content-prediction engine
- **Notable:** Pioneered the "chat fiction" format and is widely credited as the first chat-fiction platform (launched 2015)., Hit #1 on the App Store in roughly 25 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea., Grew to 40M+ active users, the majority under age 24, reviving reading habits for a video-first generation.

## Products & services

- **HOOKED (chat fiction app)** — Free iOS and Android app delivering short stories told entirely as text-message conversations between characters. Each story runs roughly 1,000-1,300 words and reads in about five minutes, with suspense and horror among the most popular genres.
- **Freemium subscription** — Readers get a run of free messages, then hit a cliffhanger paywall - either wait out a timed delay or subscribe to keep tapping. The mechanic monetizes the exact moment a reader is most desperate to know what happens next.
- **HOOKED 2.0 (user-generated stories)** — A 2016 update that opened the platform to user-submitted stories, turning readers into writers and expanding the content funnel beyond professional authors.
- **HOOKED TV** — A 2020 expansion into short-form video pilots and streaming, extending the chat-fiction audience into mobile video.
- **Content-prediction engine** — Internal big-data and machine-learning tooling that A/B tests stories against millions of readers to predict which premises and cliffhangers will retain audiences - a data-driven writers' room.

## Achievements

- Pioneered the "chat fiction" format and is widely credited as the first chat-fiction platform (launched 2015).
- Hit #1 on the App Store in roughly 25 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
- Grew to 40M+ active users, the majority under age 24, reviving reading habits for a video-first generation.
- Validated its core thesis with data: readers were ~5x more likely to finish a story in text-message format.
- Attracted an unusually star-studded investor roster spanning NBA, music, film and top-tier VC.

## Latest updates

- **2015-09** — HOOKED launches on iOS, introducing chat fiction to the App Store.
- **2016-04** — HOOKED 2.0 adds user-generated stories, letting readers write and submit their own chat fiction.
- **2017-05** — Series A funding announced with a celebrity-and-VC investor roster; ~20M downloads reported.
- **2019-03** — Reports 40M+ active users, cementing chat fiction as a mainstream youth format.
- **2020** — Launches HOOKED TV, expanding from text into short-form video pilots and streaming.

## Links

- Website: https://hooked.co
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hookedchatfiction
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/hooked
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hookedapp/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/hookedonreading/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/hooked
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-14