Pocket FM bags $22.4 million Series B funding led by Lightspeed

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

Audio streaming startup Pocket FM has raised $22.4 million in Series B funding round led by Lightspeed and participation from new investor Tanglin Venture Partners and existing investors including Times Group.

With this, the Gurugram-based startup has raised a total of $28.6 million across three rounds of fundings to date.

The company plans to use the funds raised to scale up its operations, strengthen its community of audio content creators, invest in technology to provide better recommendations and expand its presence across geographies.

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

The service is available through an annual subscription priced at Rs 399 per year. It also offers a free ad-supported version with limited content catalog.

The company claims to have clocked 40 million downloads and 3 billion monthly listening minutes, with users spending more than 110 minutes on a daily basis on the app. It aims to surpass 100 million users in the next six months.

"We are at a juncture where both Pocket FM and the overall audio OTT space are witnessing exponential growth. Audio storytelling has now become a mainstream content format for entertainment and our mission is to build Pocket FM as a global entertainment service provider," said Pocket FM CEO Rohan Nayak.

Pocket FM says it currently has a community of over 17,000 professional user-generated content writers and voice artists and some of its shows such as 'Ye Rishta Kaisa Hai' and 'Yakshini' have garnered over 300 million and 100 million plays respectively.

"We are excited to back the Pocket FM team as they scale up to build the future of audio content and are looking forward to the next phase of this incredible journey. The team has constantly innovated ahead of the curve, with multiple language offerings for their short and long form audio content and in becoming the go-to destination for audio content creators," said Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed.