Pocket FM launches Pocket Novel, aims to become India's largest online reading platform

With an aim to build India’s largest online reading platform and the default destination for the Indian writers’ community, audio series platform, Pocket FM has launched Pocket Novel.

The venture has also announced an investment of $40 million to bolster its presence in the literary landscape. With Pocket Novel, Pocket FM begins diversifying across various entertainment categories and formats, with a focus on developing its IP playbook.

Pocket Novel aims to discover and promote unique stories while fostering a platform that creates opportunities for writers across India and enables them to earn a sustainable income from their craft.

With the global market projected to exceed $6.5 billion by 2028, the venture says India is poised to emerge as the fastest-growing market in this space, presenting a promising opportunity for Pocket Novel. Pocket Novel is aiming to exceed the $100 million Annualised Revenue Run Rate worldwide by 2025.

Commenting on the launch of Pocket Novel, Rohan Nayak, Co-founder and CEO, Pocket Novel said, “We are building an ecosystem that shapes the essence of entertainment which specialises in discovering and distributing unique and unheard stories. These are adaptable across formats and geographies, creating a robust model with millions of audiences. Leveraging our learnings from our successful audio series trajectory, we remain steadfast in our commitment to cultivating a dynamic entertainment ecosystem. Our IP creation engine is designed to produce and disseminate content across diverse categories and brings disruption in the entertainment landscape.”

The platform has witnessed its writers' community flourished to over 150,000 writers with the top-performing writers earning impressive incomes, with some exceeding $2500 every month. The company intends to continue its journey towards consolidating the aspirations of the writers on its platform and envisions building a community of 1 million writers and strengthening its library to 2 million novels by 2025.

The venture says, readers’ engagement on the platform is consistently high, with an average daily reading time surpassing 100 minutes and the popular genres span across romance, drama, suspense, fantasy, and sci-fi genres.

22-year-old MBA Moni Singh, the writer of Devil Se Shaadi, turns out to be the top earner with over $3000 monthly average earnings, followed by other leading writers like Cerica (alias Jigyasa), Kavya Sharma and many more.

Speaking about her experience with Pocket Novel, she said, “Since I embarked on my writing journey with Pocket Novel, I have discovered a strength and passion for storytelling. Throughout the process of trial and error as continuous learning, I have evolved into a better writer. My successful novel 'Devil Se Shaadi' which also became a blockbuster on Pocket FM has resonated well with my audience. Their love and support kept me motivated and encouraged me to bring more enthralling scripts to them. Pocket Novel not only provided wings to my stories but has always been a supportive force.”

During its beta phase, more than 2% of novels have garnered over 500,000 reads, and over 5% have exceeded 100,000 reads. The platform's revenue has already grown 500% in 2023 and is set to reach $100 million ARR by 2025. In 2023 alone, readers made over 1 million transactions on the platform for purchasing the entire novels or certain chapters, written by its writers community.

Together, Pocket Novel and Pocket FM want to revolutionise the way stories are found, shared, enjoyed, and appreciated.