Audio streaming platform Pocket FM has raised $103 million in a Series D funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Stepstone Group.
This latest round brings Pocket FM’s total funding to date to $196.5 million. The startup plans to use fresh funding to strengthen its push into the US market and also support global expansion as it looks to expand into Europe and Latin America in 2024.
In addition to geographical expansion, Pocket FM wants to bolster its exclusive content library and create a strong IP playbook "by providing the writer community a stage to share their unique and unheard stories", as per the company statement. A Generative AI-led strategy for automation, content curation, production, and distribution will also be put in place.
The funding round comes at a time when audio streaming is finding its rhythm in India, with a million streams heard every three minutes in FY23, according to a Redseer report. Rival Kuku FM also bagged $25 million in a funding round led by Nandan Nilekani's Fundamentum Partnership and IFC less than six months ago in September 2023.
“We identified an unexplored space in the entertainment industry driven by an increasing demand for audio fiction and crafted a playbook to address this opportunity across every key market," said Rohan Nayak, CEO and Co-Founder, Pocket FM.
Founded in 2018 by Rohan Nayak, Nishanth KS and Prateek Dixit, the platform currently hosts over 100,000 hours of content, including more than 2,000 exclusive audio series and over 400,000 episodes across genres and languages.
"What sets Pocket FM apart is its vision to set up a sustainable and profitable business, backed by its unique pricing strategy. It emerges as a great reference for the entertainment landscape, with its capability to demonstrate strong unit economics. They are not just building a new category but democratising the entertainment landscape with a tech-driven approach,” said Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed.
The recently released Indus Valley Report cited Pocket FM as an example of a new wave of consumer-tech startups that are attacking distinctly Indian use cases and monetising via microtransactions, running on the rails provided by UPI.
Pocket FM claims to have clocked over 20 million transactions in 2023 with quarter-on-quarter growth of 57% to surpass $150 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). In 2023, the platform witnessed over 75 billion minutes of streaming worldwide with listeners spending an average of over 115 minutes daily.
Interestingly, listeners in the US are the most engaged on the platform globally, spending over 135 minutes daily. As a result, the North American country has turned out to be a lucrative market for the company. Since stepping into the US in the December-ending quarter of 2022, revenue from the market has crossed $100 million ARR with approximately 10 million registered users.
(Edited by : Pihu Yadav)
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