Pocket FM envisions itself as India's answer to Disney—a digital-first entertainment powerhouse leveraging artificial intelligence to export Indian narratives globally.
Founded in 2018, the Bengaluru-based startup has rapidly scaled — reporting a 68% jump in revenue from Rs 1,051 crore in FY24 to Rs 1,768 crore in FY25. It claims to have already hit Rs 2,000 crore in terms of annual revenue run rate this year.
To date, Pocket FM has secured approximately $197 million in funding over six rounds from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners and StepStone Group. Its last recorded valuation was $750 million.
In an interview with Outlook Business, co-founders Rohan Nayak (CEO), Nishanth KS (COO), and Prateek Dixit (CTO) discussed how PocketFM leverages AI to scale content creation, their expansion strategies, and the company's evolution from an audio platform to a multi-format entertainment hub.
How is Pocket FM using AI to scale content creation?
We’ve built a tool that allows you to type in your story. Once it’s written, you can choose from nearly 50 AI-generated voices, including both male and female options, to match the tone and emotion of your story. The writer selects the voice that best fits the desired tonality.
In addition to voice selection, you can also choose the type of background music and sound effects that suit your story. All of this can be done directly from a mobile device. With just a click, you can convert your written text into a fully produced AI-narrated audio series.
Let’s say you create the story in Hindi, and now you want to adapt it for a U.S. audience. The challenge is that you might not know how to write in English or understand U.S. cultural nuances. Still, your story is strong. For example, if your story is called Brahma Yudha, rooted in Indian mythology, the AI will help you adapt it. It will guide the writer and reframe the story for a U.S. audience—not just translating it but transforming its cultural context. So instead of being based on Indian mythology, the adapted version might draw from Greek mythology or Viking legends. This second layer of adaptation allows the same story to enter an entirely new market with cultural relevance. For this, you can also choose U.S.-based voiceover artists. The tool enabling all of this is called Atlas. We’re building it as an entertainment operating system—a mobile platform where creators can launch their stories in multiple languages and for different markets. The core idea is not to replace human creativity, but to unlock it. None of this would be possible without AI.
Here’s the subtle yet powerful difference: as a writer, I might not have the funds to hire voiceover artists, and production costs can be high. But with this tool, I can bring my story to life at virtually zero cost. Without this technology, I’d have to take financial risks on voice artists and production. Now, that barrier is gone.
How much are you planning to invest on AI?
Over the next six months, we plan to double down on this. The current team has about 10 members, and we aim to expand that to 20 or 30. In terms of investment, we’re currently spending around 1 million dollar, and we expect that to increase to three to four million dollars within the next six months.
Our AI-generated shows are already generating Rs 40 crore in annual revenue. While that's still a small portion of our total annual revenue of Rs 2,000 crore, it’s growing steadily. And just to clarify, that’s revenue generated in the last nine months, with a growth rate of 30–40% month-on-month. We're confident about that because of the increasing volume of shows we're launching. Currently, we release about four to five new shows each month.
How are you using AI to transform the production process of comics?
What we’ve also realised is that these AI playbooks aren’t just for audio. We’ve evolved from Pocket FM to Pocket Entertainment. We are now talking multiple formats: novels, comics, and all with an AI-first approach. For example, creating a single comic episode traditionally takes a human artist a week. That’s just for three minutes of reading time. But now, with our in-house AI comic studio called, artists don’t need to do the full drawing anymore.
Instead, they draw a rough outline. Say, for a fight scene, select a character (trained using Stable Diffusion), set the background prompt, and generate the comic panel. Now, artists can create three episodes a day, with 20x speed.
What are your expansion plans like?
We're already present in India. We also operate in the US, Mexico, the UK, Germany, and Spain. Additionally, we’re available in English-speaking markets like Australia and Canada. This year, we're expanding further by launching in France, Italy, Japan, and Korea. With the power of AI, we can expand to 80 countries by the end of this year, thanks to our ability to rapidly adapt and record shows in multiple languages.
When you're pitching to VCs or preparing for an IPO, how do you position yourselves against peers in the industry?
We see ourselves as a new-age Disney. Our comparison is with any platform for that matter.
If you look at any engagement data, it starts in the morning, peaks at 8 a.m., remains steady, and peaks again at night. Engagement is high all day long. With audio content, you don’t need to set aside time like with video (e.g., watching a movie after work). You can consume audio whenever you want—during your commute, at work, or before bed. You're competing with everything, including sleep.
A lot of people are shifting to becoming creators now. From an industry perspective, how much are creators making?
Roughly 500+ creators on our platform in India and the US, are earning between Rs 30-50K per month. They are producing short 10-15 minute episodes, typically one per day, which takes around two hours to create. Most of these creators are not full time and often juggle other jobs or are students. However, some transition to full-time once their earnings reach Rs 10–15 lakh annually.
Interestingly, there are several inspiring stories of women writers from financially modest backgrounds who have achieved financial independence through the platform. Many of them, especially from smaller cities, are now able to support their families with the income they earn, which eventually becomes a source of passive income.
Once a story is written and published, writers continue to receive a share of the revenue as long as users pay to access the content, even in the following years. The adoption of AI tools like Co-Pilot has further accelerated this trend, allowing creators to increase their productivity. Since the launch of Co-Pilot, there has been a noticeable 22% rise in output, with creators going from producing 10 hours of content a month to about 12 to 13 hours.
