Pocket FM, a provider of over-the-top audio services, has raised $65 million in a Series C investment round from a group of investors. Goodwater Capital, Naver, and an existing investor, Tanglin Venture Partners, led the round. Pocket FM’s 100,000+ hours of stimulating long-format programming, audio series, stories, novels, podcasts, and knowledge shows are available in eight languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, English, Kannada, and Marathi), it shared.)
The newly raised funds will be used to increase the company’s leadership position, expand into other languages, invest in AI capabilities, and grow the world’s largest community of audio creators.
Commenting on the funding, Rohan Nayak, Co-founder and CEO, Pocket FM said, “We are elated to announce our Series C funding and would like to thank Goodwater Capital, Naver, and Tanglin Venture Partners for their trust in us. Audio consumption has seen exponential growth over the last year, and we are on a mission to build the largest audio OTT platform.”
“In addition to audio entertainment, we noticed a 12x increase in consumption of self-help books and audio courses,” said Nishanth KS, co-founder and COO of Pocket FM. Users are on the lookout for high-quality knowledge stuff to help them improve their skills. We hope to expand our creator community even further with this funding, become the largest audio destination for entertainment and knowledge, and reach 5 million paying customers in the next 12 months.”
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Scott Shiao, Director, Investment at Goodwater Capital said, “Pocket FM empowers audio creators around the world in crafting the best long-form audio content, from writing to voice acting, while also providing a channel for consumers to find and discover that content. We look forward to helping Pocket FM to continue to grow its platform.”
YongJung (YJ) Park, Investment Director at NAVER Corporation stated, “We are excited to partner with them in the entertainment and content market as they build a robust audio ecosystem for audiences and creators alike, and to support the company in its next chapter of growth”.
Pocket FM had previously raised $22.4 million from established marquee investors such as Lightspeed, Tencent, Times Group, and Tanglin Venture Partners.
About Pocket FM
The Gurugram-based startup was established by Rohan Nayak, Nishanth Srinivas, and Prateek Dixit — all of them had developed and scaled mobile-based content products through their past works at Paytm, JioSaavn, Flipkart, and Grofers. It also streams radio stations along-with provides listeners a platform to record their audio content, add voice effects, sounds, diverse music, and share it with the community, social media, etc.
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As per a Deloitte report, podcasts could be a $3.3 Bn business by 2025, and according to KPMG, India is the third-largest podcast-listening market globally. India’s podcast scene hosts more than 40 multilingual podcast startups, including Tencent-backed Pratilipi, Fosun RZ-backed Headfone, IVM Podcasts and Suno India among many others.
