Pocket FM to lay off 75 employees amid push for profitability

Pocket FM counts Lightspeed, Tencent, Tanglin Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, Stepstone Group, Times Group and South Korean internet giant Naver among its investors

Audio series platform Pocket FM is laying off about 75 employees, as part of a restructuring exercise, Moneycontrol has learnt.

This marks the second round of job cuts at Bengaluru-based Pocket FM in the past six months, the latest step in the company's efforts to optimize costs as it strives for profitability.

It had laid off around 50 employees in October 2024. The company had also parted ways with 200 contractual writers in July 2024.

A Pocket FM spokesperson has confirmed these layoffs to Moneycontrol."As part of our commitment to building a more efficient and profitable organisation, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with close to 75 of our valued team members" the spokesperson said.

"This step, while challenging, was necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of our organization" the spokesperson added.

However, sources told Moneycontrol that the number could be higher as the process is still ongoing. They added that the tech vertical has been severely impacted in this round of job cuts.

Cross-town rival Kuku FM had also reportedly let go about 100 employees in November 2024, as part of its cost-cutting efforts.

This development comes a day after Moneycontrol reported that ShareChat is reducing its headcount by around five percent or about 20-30 employees.

Founded in 2018 by Rohan Nayak, Prateek Dixit, and Nishanth Srinivas, Pocket FM offers more than 75,000 audio series on its platform spanning genres such as romance, drama, thriller, fantasy and science fiction. The series are offered in English and several Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada and Marathi.

The app claims to have more than 200 million listeners who have streamed more than 100 billion minutes of content, with an average daily listening time of over 115 minutes. It also claims to have registered more than 45 million transactions in 2024.

Pocket FM counts Lightspeed, Tencent, Tanglin Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, Stepstone Group, Times Group and South Korean internet giant Naver among its investors. The company was last valued at $750 million when it raised $103 million led by Lightspeed in March. It has raised $196.5 million financing to date.

For the financial year 2023-24 (FY24), Pocket FM had narrowed its losses by 21 percent to Rs 165 crore, from Rs 208 crore loss in FY23. Total revenue was at Rs 1,051.97 crore, a nearly six-fold increase from Rs 176.36 crore in the previous year.

The growth was primarily driven by a 484 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in microtransaction-led subscription revenue, which rose to Rs 934.73 crore in FY24.