Audio entertainment platform Pocket FM has raised USD 103 million (about INR 850 crore) in a funding round led by Lightspeed with participation from Stepstone Group. With this most recent round, Pocket FM has received USD 196.5 million in funding overall.

“Pocket FM has raised USD 103 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Stepstone Group,” the company said in a statement.

The company expects new funding to strengthen Pocket FM’s push into the US market and support global expansion as the company plans to expand into Europe and LATAM markets in 2024. The company announced its US entry in the December 2022 quarter, and its revenue has surpassed USD 100 million annual ARR (annual recurring revenue) in the US market.

The company claims to have surpassed USD 150 million ARR and is growing at 57% quarter-over-quarter. Pocket FM claims to have clocked over 20 million transactions in 2023 and registered over 115 minutes of daily user engagement on average.

“Our robust content library of audio series and a strong consumption behaviour on the platform is shaping the future of entertainment. Our focus remains on tapping into unique and exclusive stories to solidify our leadership in this emerging category and create a strong IP playbook. This latest funding validates our vision and the possibilities we bring to disrupt the industry,” Pocket FM CEO and co-founder Rohan Nayak said.

“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 democratizing the entertainment landscape with a tech-driven approach,” said Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed.

The audio series market in India is expected to grow significantly, reaching 540 million users by 2027. The global audio series market is estimated to double in value by 2027.

Founded in 2018 by Rohan Nayak, Nishanth Srinivas, and Prateek Dixit, Pocket FM is an online audio entertainment platform, with a strong focus on serialised fictional storytelling. The platform, which is available in languages such as English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, and Bengali, has 130 million listeners globally.

Pocket FM reported INR 131 crore in revenue in FY23, a huge jump from INR 17.5 crore in FY22. The Bengaluru-based company also narrowed its loss before tax to INR 75.7 crore in FY23, a 56% decrease from INR 171.6 crore in FY22.

Numerous genres, such as romance, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, mythology, suspense, and thrillers, are available on Pocket FM. Typically, each episode lasts anywhere from ten to thirty minutes. Many languages, including Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali, are available for content on Pocket FM. The site uses a Freemium business model, where listeners can access the first three to four episodes for free each day. After that, the listeners are charged by the platform and given the option to purchase the full audio series or make a small payment for each episode.

Sources – PTI, Wikipedia, Pocket FM

Source – Pocket FM