Source: Entrepreneurship State
Author 丨 Li Shuangshuang
Indian startup Pocket FM relies on the "Himalayan FM" audio -visual APP, and its annualized income has exceeded $ 160 million.In September 2023, Pocket FM ranked among the top 5 in the ranking of the Best Startup in India in 2023, and the download volume of downloads in the Google Play store exceeded 100 million times in the same month.
According to Ruilou analysis, Pocket FM was established in September 2018 and received a total of multiple investments.
On May 2, 2023, Pocket FM received $ 16 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a subsidiary of the United States.Data show that PocketFM currently raises a total of US $ 1097.3 million.
According to Tech Crunch, Around November 22, Pocket FM’s ARR has exceeded US $ 160 million and is in contact with the latest round of financing, with an amount of over 80 million US dollars. This round of financing is led by LightSpeed, with a valuation of nearly 800 million US dollars after integration.
Earlier, Pocket FM has received investment in the US venture capital Goodwater, the Korean Internet group Naver, the Singapore venture capital Tanglin Venture Partners, the Indian factory Times Internet, Tencent Cloud Europe, and LightSpeed, a Silicon Valley.It is reported that after Pocket FM raised funds, it is expanding to overseas markets such as the United States.
Pocket FM was founded by 3 Indian people Rohan Nayak, Nishanth Srinivas, Prateek Dixit.The founder Rohan’s goal is to build PocketFM as one of the top OTT players in India and become the audio "Netflix".Jaipur Investment
According to him, the platform has increased by 10 times in 2022, with a monthly transaction volume of more than 500,000.
Lightspeed led three times, and the income increased by 10 times within 1 year
Pocket FM is an audio series platform. Platform works are divided into three types: radio drama, audio book and web.Among them, the platform’s most popular radio drama "Insta Millionaire" has 154 million playback volume, and as of April 2023, it has brought about 3.6 million US dollars.
Its APP has several columns of fantasy, superpowers, drama, fantasy, and romantic, including English, Hindi, Bangladesh, Tamili, Tyuku, Mala Jam, and Canada.In 8 languages, the work in the library exceeds 100,000 hours.The type of program in the platform is based on popular novels and has done more deeply in dialects.
In terms of user composition, India’s daily life accounts for 75%, the United States accounts for 15%, and 80%of listeners are 15-35 years old.Pocket FM said it meets the needs of 80 million people around the world, and the average audience spends more than 150 minutes a day.
Different from the subscription mode adopted by most Indian local streaming platforms, Pocket FM provides free episodes every 24 hours to operate with free value -added mode, allowing users to pay for node content.This type is flexible with the service model that is paid and paid by quantitatively. The continuity of the audio -visual drama shows the income potential and can retain users.
Pocket FM walked from the Indian market to the United States, with 80 % income from the US market.It has almost no revenue except for the initial period of establishment, and slowly starts in the next 4 years and has made rapid progress.
After receiving the first financing in October 2020, Pocket FM, which reserved original content and creators, began to launch the US market and bought money in the second half of 2021.Less than $ 3,000.In December 2021, it conducted international expansion through cooperation with the US podcast company Triton Digital.
In March 2022, the C -round C financing was a key node. Get $ 65 million Pocket FM expanded the new work language Spanish. At the same time, it cultivated the American creator community.EssenceIn the same month, Shreya Punj, who was blamed at Penguin Random House, joined Pocket FM to lead the sound book business.
According to Mint, in November 2022, the Pocket FM sound drama reached 733, and the water flowing in a single day exceeded 20,000 US dollars.The founder Rohan said: "Our income increased by 10 times within 12 months (2021-2022), reaching ARR of $ 25 million."
After debt financing, the number of daily lives of Pocket FM has steadily increased, the revenue potential of radio drama has achieved effect, and the investment in investment has gradually decreased.
Pocket FM has obtained the continuous betting of the old American VC.LightSpeed India Partners led a round A financing of Pocket FM in 2020. In December 2021, Pocket FM raised $ 22.4 million in Series B financing led by LightSpeed.It is reported that LightSpeed will once again dominate the latest round of $ 80 million in financing.
The world’s largest audio market is in India, LightSpeed and Tencent have cooperated with startups many times.It is not difficult to see that the content and mode of Pocket FM has the "shadow" of Indian audio platforms.On the one hand, in the non -subscribing model, the tokens are "small and multiple times" (40 to $ 1.99, and the average price of 0.5 US dollars/set) is not strange for Indian users.
On the other hand, in the past two weeks, Pocket FM adds the popularity of the platform’s popular work "Insta Millionaire" and other live -action dramas and dynamic anomalism, and uses popular IP film and television to achieve the drainage effect.Simla Wealth Management
At present, Pocket FM network texts and radio dramas are compared with faults, and the maximum reading volume of network texts is about one -tenth of radio dramas.It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the long -term list of "Insta Millionaire", the copyright of TOP2 and 3 of the broadcast drama in the platform comes from the reading, which is authorized by the domestic website.
Think of money to make money at work
In 2018, India’s digital music and streaming media have not yet developed.According to Zhu Dao Capital, Sony Music ’s head of India, Shridhar Subramaniam, said that India has never been a regular music media market, and it has never had a lot of download business.
The continuous improvement of India’s mobile Internet has driven the growth of domestic Internet users, which has stimulated the development momentum of India’s online audio.Rohan, the founder of Pocket FM, also accidentally discovered the blue ocean market with audio books.
In April 2018, CUBE26, the mobile technology company where Rohan was located, was acquired by Paytm, India, and he joined Paytm as a product manager.Rohan went to work to work and commute for 3 hours every day. He listened to many audio content along the way, but this made him feel about the same as work -most Podiers and audiobooks in India are still sharing of professional knowledge.
"I don’t want so much knowledge." Rohan began to dig deep into the content composition of the Indian audio platform and found that there were almost no entertainment content."I have paid attention to the content field for seven or eight years. At that time, there were already a bunch of entertainment platforms and videos. It was really surprising that almost everyone missed this (audio entertainment) market."
Rohan started searching on YouTube. Seeing that audio creators will upload audio with no video screens on YouTube (only one preview), but they have millions of subscribers and tens of millions of views."I found from the root that no one in India thinks that audio is a form of entertainment. Then we set up an audio OTT platform and use the most intuitive form of stories to do audio entertainment."
In September 2018, Rohan and two alumni Nishanth Srinivas and Prateek Dixit co -founded Pocket FM.Among them, Nishanth was the product management director of Jiosaavn, the second largest music streaming platform in India.
At the beginning, the company had almost no revenue, and Rohan even told Volume that the company had no real script, and it was necessary to try an effective way to try audio and entertainment from scratch.They put the advertisement with the experiment mentality and found that the novels with plot content are indeed effective in audio entertainment.
He believes that audiovisual studies are a good way to focus on knowledge and systematics.Most people cannot maintain a focus on learning for 2-3 hours, but they can continue to pay attention to a wonderful story and want to unlock more."I think this is a key driver for interesting content that is different from professional knowledge." In the early days, every increase in a user, Rohan believes that it is an important growth point. This form will lead Pocket FM into a company.
After determining the content direction, Rohan adjusts the operating strategy.In March 2022, Rohan realized that the most effective thing for the company was not subscription, but micro -payment."This is a very important change for usKanpur Investment. Advertising and micro -payment are our main source of income. Micro -payment has made the greatest contribution to the income."
Micro -payment is not a plan to shoot heads.Rohan converts his mind, and users do not need to buy subscriptions from the entire platform to unlock a certain episode.He did a business experiment for this and found that users always insist on subscribing and paying for content that are interested.
Once in the Indian music market, piracy was rampant, and Indian users were not willing to pay.According to IMI research, 76 % of Indian Internet users in 2019 acknowledged that they are still visiting pirated music.
Pocket FM is lifted during the lock -up period. "It only needs to pay only when it exceeds the restrictions of free episodes." This brings platform income to increase.Pocket FM does not require user payment subscription fees. Instead, it is priced for each episode to reduce the threshold for users to enter the user to pay for the order of the user.
With the launch of this small payment model, the PoCket FM streamlined media playback volume increased by 75%in 2022, an increase of 11.4 times in operating scale in the 2022 fiscal year, and total revenue reached 1.755 billion rupees.
In addition to business models, Pocket FM gradually seized another opportunity: dialect audio market segment.According to Prashant Panday, the CEO of India Entertainment Mirchi, in 2022, India’s high -quality non -music audio content in India currently provides very few content in the region language."Pocket FM has expanded to 5 local languages in 2021. In addition to Indian, it also includes Tamili and Canada, with the highest degree of acceptance of Indian Internet users.
Rohan shared in an interview that "frankly speaking, no creator or artist in the entire history can reach such a huge traffic and users today."He inspires the creator through 3 steps. One is to let the creator come into contact with the audience. According to the user’s response to the story, the user is the first; the other is to make the creator profit from the blog; the third is to provide data to the creator with dataAnd analyze to understand user behavior.Guoabong Stock
LightSpeed partner Harsha Kumar said in The Economic Times: "We are glad to support the Pocket FM team. They provide a variety of language versions for short and long -format audio content, and become the first choice destination for audio content creators."
During the period when Indian audio streaming is almost non -existent, Rohan has launched Pocket FM, which has now become one of the popular startups.
The best time for Indian audio entrepreneurship
During the same period, many audio startups in India were also rising.
In 2018, in the same year of Pocket FM, KUKU FM, its biggest competitor entered the audio field.The founder Lal Chand Bisu fancy the information acquisition method of Indian users. Choose to cut into the dialect market from the audio. KUKU FM also provides users with diverse audio content, including sound books, news, TV series, etc., and is committed to becoming "India’s Himalayan FM".Get the attention and investment of KRAFTON, Xiangfeng Investment, Shunwei Capital.
Not only that, India ushered in the "audio year", and business giants, entrepreneurs, and venture capitals turned their attention to India.In 2018, Amazon launched Audible in India’s audio book platform. Storytel, Sweden, founded the Indian platform. In 2019, the Streaming Giant Spotify entered the Indian podcast field.
The development of audio OTT in India is developing rapidly.According to data, in 2018, the Indian digital music industry revenue was about 109 million US dollars, of which music streaming media were US $ 101 million, accounting for 93%.
In 2020, the Indian local streaming GAANA launched video stories and original podcasts. Jiosaavn, which is a telecommunications operator, produced original programs to establish a podcast vertical market, occupying about 30%and 24%of the market share, respectively.
Because of its large population, India is considered the third largest podcast consumer market in the world.In the Indian current media audio market, startups and commercial giants, local companies and foreign capital all want to split a share, Pocket FM is among them.
Rohan said: "I’m really lucky, now it is the best time for entrepreneurs to start a business. When we build products, India already has positive support, deep talent pools, liquidity ecosystems.Let us build products for the world. "According to Indian industry executives, Pocket FM has far exceeded KUKU FM in recent years and enters the fast lane.
Some opinions believe that India has a small audio -visual industry, poor advertising economy, and difficult to change user payment subscription habits. No one can really make money on Indian audio streaming media.This can be seen from the US market from 80 % of Pocket FM.
Data show that the total expenditure of Pocket FM has increased from the Rs 19 million in fiscal 2021 to 1.8915 billion in Rs Rs Rs Rs. The loss of losses is also soaring.This is similar to the development of the Indian Himalayan FM. The number of active users, payment rates, and high -speed revenue increased, but it has not yet gone out of the quagmire from the 4th to 6th year after its establishment.
However, Pocket FM has knocked on the door of the European and American markets, and has gained reliable VC financing all the way.Rohan believes that the establishment of the content platform makes artistic creation democratic, and Pocket FM brings new art forms into life."Audio readings still have huge space."
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