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Pocket FM, an audio OTT platform, has raised $65 million in a Series C funding from Goodwater Capital, Naver, and Tanglin Venture Partners. Including this funding, Pocket FM had raised a total of $93.6 million across multiple rounds. The recent funding will be invested towards expanding Pocket FM into new languages, enhancing AI capabilities, among other things.
Founded in 2018, Pocket FM offers over 1,00,000 hours of long-format content, audio series, stories, novels, podcasts, and knowledge shows in eight languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, English, Kannada, and Marathi). The platform has over 50 million users, more than 3 billion monthly listening minutes, and a creator community of over 50,000 PUGC (professional user-generated content) writers and voice artists.
‘Validation of our market leadership’
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. This is a validation of our market leadership and trust in our execution capabilities. Audio consumption has seen exponential growth over the last year, and we are on a mission to build the largest audio OTT platform.”
Nishanth KS, Co-founder and COO, Pocket FM, said, “In addition to audio entertainment, we saw 12x growth in consumption of self-help books, audio courses. Users are looking for high-quality knowledge content to up-skill themselves. With this investment, we are looking to grow our creator community further, be the biggest audio destination for entertainment and knowledge, and target 5 million paying users in the next 12 months.”
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.”
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