Pocket FM forays into the US; clocks $25 million annualised revenue run rate

(Left to right) Pocket FM founders Nishanth KS, Prateek Dixit and Rohan Nayak.

Audio streaming platform Pocket FM on November 8 announced its international foray by entering the US market.

The Bengaluru-based startup also said it had crossed $25 million in annual revenue run rate as of October, led by the introduction of micropayments and advertising solutions.

The startup is now hoping to touch $100 million in annual revenue run rate by next year, Pocket FM co-founder Rohan Nayak said in a statement.

On Twitter, Nayak shared that the startup earned revenue of $2.1 million in October 2022, up from $1.9 million in September 2022 and $0.2 million in October 2021.

"Long form serialised fiction in the form of audio series has been pivotal in our growth journey," he said in a tweet. The company says it has created 733 audio series so far and the category accounts for over 90 percent of the time spent by users.

The startup claims to currently have over 80 million users who listen to content for over 100 minutes on a daily basis. Over 80 percent of its listeners are in the age group of 15-35 years, of which 68 percent are below 25 years, it said. Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Hyderabad are among Pocket FM's top five cities.

In terms of genres, Pocket FM said that a majority of its users listen to romance, suspense, thrillers and family drama content with fantasy content also picking up in recent months.

About 45% of listeners listen to audio content between 12 noon to 6 pm and 9 pm to midnight while 31% listeners listen to content while in transit, from 9 am to 12 noon and 6 pm to 9 pm, the startup said.

Founded in 2018 by Nayak, Nishanth Srinivas, and Prateek Dixit, Pocket FM says it provides more than 100,000 hours of long-format audio content across audiobooks, shows, stories, novels, podcasts and knowledge shows in English and seven Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, and Marathi.

It claims to have a community of over 500,000 creators that includes professional user-generated content (PUGC) writers and voice artists.

"As we scale up to emerge as the global audio series platform, we will continue to strengthen our content library, and nurture and grow our creator community across the world to keep our listeners entertained," Nayak said.

The company rolled out its online reading platform called 'Pocket Novel' in October 2021. In about a year, the platform has seen over 100,000 novels being uploaded by the writer community and the startup has started converting some of its top-performing novels into audio series, it said.

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

It has raised a total $93.5 million financing to date, which includes a $65 million funding round in March this year and a $22.4 million round in December last year.

Rival Kuku FM also recently received the backing of Nandan Nilekani-led Fundamentum Partnership that led a $21.8 million funding round in the startup in September 2022. Kuku FM has raised a total $47 million financing to date.