Insider Brief
- Pocket FM announced a Series D funding round of $103 million, led by Lightspeed and StepStone Group, bringing its total funding to $196.5 million to fuel its U.S. market entry and global expansion into Europe and LATAM in 2024.
- The platform, a leader in serialized audio storytelling, boasts over 100,000+ hours of content, including 2,000+ exclusive audio series, achieving $150 million ARR and witnessing over 75 billion streaming minutes globally in 2023.
- With a generative AI-led strategy for content curation and distribution, Pocket FM aims to enhance user experience through personalized recommendations, having entered the U.S. market in Q4 2022 with $100 million ARR from the U.S. audience alone.
PRESS RELEASE — LOS ANGELES/March 20, 2024 — (BUSINESS WIRE)–#AI — Pocket FM, a leading audio entertainment platform pioneering the audio series category, today announced that it has raised $103 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Lightspeed with participation from StepStone Group.
This latest round brings Pocket FM’s total funding to date to $196.5 million.
The new funding will strengthen Pocket FM’s push into the U.S. market and also support global expansion as the company plans to expand into Europe and LATAM markets in 2024. The company will continue to strengthen its exclusive content library and create a strong IP playbook by providing the writer community a stage to share their unique and unheard stories.
Pocket FM recognized a gap in the entertainment landscape and capitalized on it by focusing on original and unique storytelling across different genres, pioneering a new entertainment category in the form of audio series. Since launching in 2018, Pocket FM has been driving serialized audio storytelling, and has established itself as the leader in personalized audio entertainment. The company is disrupting the entertainment category with its audio series and crafting a playbook to define the future of entertainment.
Establishing itself as a leader in the entertainment space, Pocket FM has built the largest repository of exclusive audio series. With over 100,000+ hours of content, including 2,000+ exclusive audio series and more than 400,000 episodes across genres and languages, the platform has cultivated a loyal audience and established itself as a driving force in the entertainment category. The company has surpassed $150 million ARR, and is growing at 57% QoQ. It has clocked over 20 million transactions in 2023. Globally, listeners spend an average of over 115 minutes daily. In 2023 alone, the platform witnessed over 75 billion minutes of streaming worldwide.
The company announced its U.S. entry in Q4 of 2022 and its revenue has surpassed $100 million ARR in the U.S. market. U.S. audiences are the most engaged on the platform globally, spending over 135 minutes daily. The platform has approximately 10 million registered users in the U.S.
Pocket FM has put up a generative AI-led strategy for automation, content curation, production, and distribution. The company plans to leverage generative AI to scale its entertainment content offerings and build AI-powered personalized recommendations that enhance the overall user experience.
“We identified an unexplored space in the entertainment industry driven by an increasing demand for audio fiction and crafted a playbook to address this opportunity across every key market,” said Rohan Nayak, CEO and Co-Founder of Pocket FM. “Our robust content library of audio series and a strong consumption behavior on the platform is shaping the future of entertainment. Our focus remains on tapping into unique and exclusive stories to solidify our leadership in this emerging category and create a strong IP playbook. This latest funding validates our vision and the possibilities we bring to disrupt the industry.”
“What sets Pocket FM apart is its vision to set up a sustainable and profitable business, backed by its unique pricing strategy. It emerges as a great reference for the entertainment landscape, with its capability to demonstrate strong unit economics. They are not just building a new category but democratizing the entertainment landscape with a tech-driven approach,” said Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed.
The Pocket FM app is available on iOS and Android. To learn more, visit www.pocketfm.com.
About Pocket FM:
Founded in 2018, Pocket FM was built with a vision to redefine the audio OTT space by pioneering the audio-series category. We pride ourselves in embedding the storytelling elements with a layer of content personalization in the longer format that resulted in the emergence of “binge listening” as a consumption habit. Being the only audio entertainment OTT, we have emerged as the preferred digital audio destination for a refined storytelling experience with the audio-series format, riding on our diverse and engaging content.
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