Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADIA is in talks to back Pocket FM in a major new round of funding, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, as the Indian audio storytelling platform makes deeper inroads into the US.
Talks about the new round, which have been ongoing for more than a month, follow Pocket FM recently securing about $100 million in a separate round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, the sources said, requesting anonymity as details are not yet available. public.
TechCrunch reported on Lightspeed Venture Partners committing to invest in Pocket FM last year. The Bengaluru-based startup’s talks with ADIA and the closing of its recent round not previously reported.
The funding talks follow rapid revenue growth at the Indian startup, which offers serialized and non-fiction content spanning genres such as romance, self-help and motivational. Its annual revenue run rate by the end of last year had topped $160 million, TechCrunch previously reported, a six- to sevenfold increase over a year ago.
ADIA and Pocket FM have yet to reach an agreement, so the talks may end up not materializing in an investment, people familiar with the matter warned. ADIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Pocket FM said it refrained from commenting on market speculation.
Pocket FM — which also counts Tencent, Tanglin and Times Internet among its backers — had publicly set a target of reaching $100 million in ARR by the end of 2023.
Image Credits: Bain
Indian startups saw a significant drop in large-scale funding rounds last year, as prominent crossover funds including Tiger Global and SoftBank reduced their investments in India and other markets, while many well-known India-focused funds turned their attention to early support startups scene, Bain said this week.
Several sovereign wealth funds, including ADIA, Temasek, GIC and Qatar Investment Authority, increased the pace of their investments last year, cutting large check sizes to start-ups such as PhonePe, Lenskart and PharmEasy.
Pocket FM’s expansion into the US and offering customers a non-subscription, pay-as-you-go offering has proven particularly successful. Pocket FM operates on a freemium model, leveraging long-form episodic storytelling to give users the option to pay only for the content they prefer rather than the entire library.
This approach allowed the startup to offer free access to episodes every 24 hours, with a fee for additional content. Since early 2022, the platform has used a microtransaction model, enabling users to purchase coins in local currency to redeem for episodes beyond the free limit. On average, listeners spend more than 110 minutes daily on the platform, TechCrunch previously reported.
The startup announced last month that it would invest $40 million to develop its online reading platform Pocket Novel. More than 90,000 writers had signed up for the app in less than a month, Pocket FM co-founder Rohan Nayak He wrote on LinkedIn this week.
