Kuku, an Indian storytelling platform backed by Google, has raised $85 million in fresh funding as it aims to scale its audio and video content offerings amid intensifying competition in the South Asian country’s mobile-first content market.
The Series C round, led by Granite Asia (formerly GGV Capital), values Kuku at more than double its previous valuation at around $500 million, Kuku founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu confirmed to TechCrunch. Vertex Growth Fund, Krafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India and Bitkraft also participated in the round.
The latest round also included secondary trading, with some of Kuku’s early investors exiting in part by selling their shares to new investors. That includes Google, which owned a 2 percent stake and is now exiting entirely, Bisu told TechCrunch.
India, which is home to over a billion internet subscribers and around 700 million smartphone users, is seeing a huge growth in digital content consumption due to ultra-low data costs and seamless micropayments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently observed this 1GB of data in India costs less than a cup of tea. The government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) — a system that enables instant digital payments between bank accounts — has also made digital transactions easy and widely accessible. This combination has made the Indian market attractive to global players like Instagram and YouTube, while also giving local platforms like Kuku a competitive edge in reaching mass audiences through content in local Indian languages.
In 2024, digital media surpassed TV for the first time to become the largest segment of India’s media and entertainment industry, contributing 32% of total revenue — ₹802 billion (about $9.13 billion), per EY report (PDF) released in March. The report also predicts that digital media will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.2% between 2024 and 2027.
This growth potential has prompted players like Kuku to experiment with new formats, including the recent one popularized micro-dramas — short, serialized video stories designed for mobile viewing. The format has caught on in all Indian startups and it even attracted the attention of global platformswith Meta recently launched her own micro-drama series in the country targeting the Gen Z audience.
Founded in 2018, Kuku first gained traction among Indian content consumers with its audiobook offerings through Kuku FM. Since then, it has expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms: Kuku TV, which presents long-form stories as vertical episodes, and Kuku FM, which focuses on audio-based shows. The platforms provide content in more than eight Indian languages and have crossed 10 million paid subscribers, the startup said, up from two million during its last round in 2023.
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The startup has seen a 2x increase in average revenue per user and 10x overall growth since its last funding round, Bisu said, without disclosing actual financials. He noted that about 80% of his subscribers are from non-metropolitan cities.
About 60 percent of Kuku’s subscriber base is male and 40 percent female, Bisu said, adding that most subscribers are between 25 and 35 years old.
Kuku offers access to its platforms through paid subscription plans, including ₹199 (about $2) per month, ₹499 (about $6) per quarter, and ₹1,499 (about $17) per year. Bisu said the quarterly plan is the most popular among users.
Consumers spend an average of 100 minutes daily on Kuku’s platforms, the founder said, adding that more than 90% of the startup’s subscribers stay active every month.
Kuku receives content through third-party content creators and currently has around 10,000 creators. Of these, more than 50% are from small towns and cities outside the metro, Bisu said. He noted that the startup pays around ₹400 million (about $4.5 million) monthly to its creators.
The Kuku FM app drove downloads and consumer spending across the startup’s portfolio, which includes Kuku TV, Kuku Bhakti (a devotional app featuring stories based on Hindu mythology) and StoRizz (which focuses on micro-dramas), according to data from Appfigures shared with TechCrunch.
By September, Kuku had recorded over 229 million total downloads, including 122 million for Kuku FM and 88 million for Kuku TV. Kuku’s apps generated more than $4 million in consumer spending, with $2.8 million from Kuku FM and $1.3 million from Kuku TV, data from Appfigures shows.
In 2025 alone, the startup saw over 134 million downloads — a 533% year-over-year increase — and $1.9 million in consumer spending, up 156%, according to Appfigures data.
Bisu told TechCrunch that in terms of consumption, Kuku TV is bigger than Kuku FM, accounting for over 60% of total usage.
The Bengaluru-based startup has created a GenAI studio to streamline content creation, using AI tools for multilingual translation and on-demand ad production. The studio includes software from AI companies including OpenAI and ElevenLabs, as well as some of Kuku’s in-house tools.
“We’re shifting most of the focus to our tools, because now we have a lot of our own data. We train these models with our own data, and then the output is much better than external tools,” Bisu told TechCrunch.
The startup doesn’t use GenAI to produce content autonomously, but uses it to help creators develop audio and video stories for its platforms. The tools help create titles, plots, scripts, dialogue and thumbnails, while the actual audio and video production is done by hand, Bisu said.
He added that 70% to 80% of the work at Kuku is powered by GenAI, with the remaining 20% still done manually.
Without naming specific people, Bisu said the startup plans to use the new funding to improve its content by bringing in celebrities, including film and TV personalities.
However, Kuku faces stiff competition from local rivals, notably Pocket FM, which offers similar audio and visual storytelling formats. Pocket FM has filed multiple copyright infringement lawsuits against Kuku. More recently, the Delhi High Court restrained Kuku by releasing new episodes of five controversial shows.
Bisu said Pocket FM’s lawsuits were meant to distract investors. “Every time, whenever we do a fundraiser, they [Pocket FM] they go to some court and sue. So it’s not the first time,” Bisu told TechCrunch.
He added that Kuku has a dedicated team that manually reviews all uploaded content to check for copyright violations. The startup has also developed tools to detect whether creators are uploading copyrighted or third-party content.
“Some of the money [from this round] will also continue to improve these tools — we plan to invest in technology that can detect when a creator is using someone else’s work,” Bisu said.
Compared to Pocket FM, Kuku had more downloads but saw significantly lower revenue from in-app purchases, Appfigures data shows. While India accounts for the bulk of Kuku’s downloads and profits, Pocket FM generates 82% of its downloads from India, but earns 98% of its revenue outside the country, according to Appfigures.
While Kuku saw significant growth in both downloads and consumer spending in 2025, Pocket FM saw a 21% year-over-year decline to 38 million, but a 61% increase in consumer spending to $100 million, according to Appfigures data.
That said, Kuku plans to use its latest funding to improve its AI and data infrastructure, expand its 150-person workforce by hiring new technology and content talent, and deepen its creator partnerships and scale in India and beyond. The startup is already testing its offerings in the Middle East and the US, with plans to expand to the US in 2026.
