Pocket FM elevates Lalit Gangwar as VP and US country head

Lalit Gangwar was previously Pocket FM's global head of growth.

Audio series platform Pocket FM has elevated Lalit Gangwar as vice president and country head for the United States market, where he will lead content operations and revenue growth, the company said on January 17.

Gangwar was serving as Pocket FM's global head of growth and played a key role in establishing the startup's presence across multiple geographies, including India and the United States, the company said in a statement.

"In the dynamic US entertainment industry, audio series are becoming more popular as a mainstream platform, fuelled by the emergence of widespread audio entertainment. Aligned with this evolution, we aim to deliver compelling storytelling that contributes to the growth of the audio series category in the US," Gangwar said.

An IIT-Madras alumni, Gangwar joined Pocket FM in June 2021 as its head of growth for the India market. Gangwar has had stints at companies such as Zomato, Healthkart and Dineout.

"(Lalit Gangwar) has been a driving force in our journey towards achieving profitable growth. In this elevated role, we believe Pocket FM will continue to thrive and keep expanding into newer territories and emerge as a global leader in the audio entertainment space" said Pocket FM co-founder Rohan Nayak.

Read: Pocket FM's India arm revenue jumps to Rs 131 crore in FY23; loss reduces by 56%

Founded in 2018 by 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 startup forayed into the United States in 2022.

The company claims to have over 130 million listeners globally who spend an average of over 115 minutes on a daily basis.

In December, 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.

Over the past year, Pocket FM has strengthened its top and senior management with several key hires, It picked former Netflix executive Pannagadatta K Shivaswamy to lead the company's artificial intelligence efforts, former PhonePe executive Subeer Bakshi as head of people and culture, Vedantu's Vivek Bhutyani as VP-content marketing and former Meta executive Niteesh Yadav as director of design.

On January 9, it appointed Suyog Gothi as vice President and India country head to spearhead the startup's operations in the country.

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.