Pocket FM hires Suyog Gothi as VP and India Country Head

Suyog Gothi joins Pocket FM from PhonePe, where he was heading the digital payments firm's merchant lending division

Audio series platform Pocket FM has on January 9 appointed Suyog Gothi as Vice President and India Country Head, as the Bengaluru-based startup strengthens its top deck for future growth.

Gothi will spearhead the startup's operations in India, working closely with co-founders Rohan Nayak and Nishanth KS, Pocket FM said in a statement.

His responsibilities will include overseeing operations in India and implementing strategic initiatives to further strengthen Pocket FM's presence in the country. He will also focus on scaling up the startup's user and writer community in the country.

IIT-Madras alumni Gothi joins Pocket FM from PhonePe, where he was heading the digital payments firm's merchant lending division. He was with PhonePe for nearly seven years across multiple roles including scaling up PhonePe's UPI payments business. Gothi has also had stints at RoadRunnr and Flipkart.

"His proven track record and strategic vision align with our goals for expansion and innovation. We are confident that Suyog will play a pivotal role in scaling up Pocket FM's success in India" said Pocket FM co-founder Nishanth KS.

Over the past year, Pocket FM has strengthened its top and senior management with several key hires including former Netflix executive Pannagadatta K. Shivaswamy to lead the company's artificial intelligence efforts, former PhonePe executive Subeer Bakshi as its Head of People and Culture, Vedantu's Vivek Bhutyani as VP-Content Marketing, and former Meta executive Niteesh Yadav as director of design.

Founded in 2018 by Rohan Nayak, Prateek Dixit, and Nishanth Srinivas, Pocket FM claims to provide more than 100,000 hours of long-format audio content across various genres such as romance, horror, thriller, sci-fi, fiction, and mythology in English and several Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, and Marathi.

The company claims to have over 130 million listeners globally who are spending an average of over 115 minutes on a daily basis. Last month, the platform said it clocked over 20 million transactions in 2023, closing the year with 2.5 million monthly transactions. The audio content was streamed for over 75 billion minutes during the year, with an average monthly streaming of over 6 billion minutes, 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 $109.5 million to date, which includes a $16 million debt financing in May 2023 and a $65 million funding round in March 2022.

Pocket FM's India arm posted revenues of Rs 131 crore for FY23, registering a 647 percent increase year-on-year (YoY). The revenue jump was driven by significant growth in microtransactions and advertising business. Losses before tax reduced by 56 percent YoY to Rs 75.7 crore for the financial year.