Pocket FM parent firm expands into webcomics with Pocket Toons

Pocket Toons will provide consumers bite-sized stories in the form of webtoons across multiple genres such as romance, drama, fantasy and sci-fi among others.

The company stated that it will release three episodes for a comic each day, compared to the industry norm of one episode per week.

This speedier output is due to Pocket Entertainment's new AI-powered studio, Blaze, which the company says is enabling creators to produce high-quality, episodic content 20 times faster and at one-third the production cost.

Consumers will be able to purchase these episodes through micro-payments, a model already used by the firm's audio series platform, Pocket FM.

Pocket Toons currently has 30 comic titles, with users spending an average of 60 minutes daily, with paying users spending twice the amount of time during the app's beta phase, which started in January 2025, the company said. It has now committed $15 million to scale up the platform in 2025 with a goal of reaching $100 million in annualised revenue run rate (ARR) by 2026.

With this launch, Pocket Toons will be competing with Google-backed Toonsutra and Dashtoon, which counts Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners among its investors. Krafton-backed digital storytelling platform Pratilipi also has a comic-reading platform called Pratilipi Comics.

Read: Pocket FM partners ElevenLabs to help writers create AI audio series with a single click

Blending AI with human creativity

Pocket Entertainment expects Blaze, which blends AI with human creativity, to give the company a competitive edge over its rivals.

Shreyas Joshi, Senior Vice President, Pocket Toons told Moneycontrol that Blaze uses AI to help creators with the time-consuming coloring and inking process, while the initial sketch and final touches are done manually. This includes automating processes such as background rendering, scene composition, and quality control.

"Since we are able to do the coloring in roughly a day, we shrink the whole process by more than half while still maintaining the essence of the comic and its art style so that it doesn't look like an AI-generated image" Joshi said.

Dixit explained that the creator, writers, and the artists are in control of the entire process. "You need to have the power with the artist and then use AI as more of an assistant and co-pilot," he said.

For Blaze, Pocket Entertainment is leveraging existing image diffusion models and fine-tuning them to an artist's or a show's unique style, using their own training data, art style, and characters, Dixit said.

“The fusion of AI and human storytelling marks the beginning of a new creative era...At Pocket Entertainment, we are harnessing AI to amplify human creativity—empowering artists to push the boundaries of storytelling without replacing their unique artistic expression" said Pocket Entertainment co-founder Rohan Nayak.

Increasing revenue from existing IPs

Blaze is currently available for the in-house writers of Pocket Entertainment as the company aims to convert all its 'blockbuster IPs' across Pocket FM and Pocket Novel into comics. The startup plans to publicly launch the product in about four to six months, Dixit said.

This move will also help Pocket Entertainment expand its reach and, as a result, increase the revenue generated from popular shows like Saving Nora, an audio revenge drama series that has earned over $35 million in the past three years.

In December 2024, the company said it had over seven audio series surpassing $10 million in revenue and about 35 audio series that had crossed the million dollar revenue mark.

Overall, Pocket Entertainment surpassed the Rs 1,000-crore revenue milestone in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24), with revenues totaling Rs 1,051.97 crore. The United States accounts for 70 percent of the firm's revenues followed by India at 15 percent and the remaining from the rest of the world.

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.

"India is making its mark on the global AI stage, and Blaze is the latest proof of how India is building AI for the world...Pocket Toons is setting new benchmarks in the comics industry—redefining storytelling by blending human creativity with AI-driven efficiency" said Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed, in a statement.