Startup Pocket FM has surpassed $160 million in annual revenue and is close to raising more than $80 million in a new round of funding, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Lightspeed, an existing investor in Pocket FM, is in the final stages of talks to lead the funding round in the Indian startup, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. The investment giant is evaluating funding the round from both its India and US arms, one of the sources said. Current discussions value the startup at nearly $800 million, two of the sources said.
The funding talks follow a rapid increase in revenue at the Indian startup, which offers serialized and non-fiction content spanning genres such as romance, self-help and motivational. Its current ARR is more than $160 million, two sources said, a six- to seven-fold increase from a year ago. Pocket FM had publicly set a target of reaching $100 million in ARR by the end of 2023.
The startup’s expansion into the US and offering customers a non-subscription, pay-as-you-go offering has proven particularly successful, one of the sources said.
Pocket FM — which also counts Tencent and Times Internet as backers and has raised about $93 million to date, according to venture insight platform Tracxn — operates on a freemium model, leveraging long-form episodic storytelling to give users they prefer the option to pay for content only 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, allowing users to buy coins in local currency to redeem for episodes beyond the free limit. On average, listeners spend more than 110 minutes daily on the platform, according to another person with knowledge of the matter.
Pocket FM and Lightspeed declined to comment on Tuesday night. Indian agency Entrackr previously reported some of the funding details.
