Pocket FM is an audio content platform that has recently raised Rs 41 crores in Series A round. The round was led by Tencent, Times Group and Lightspeed India. In 2018, the startup also raised Rs 4.61 crore in a seed round from Times Group and Lightspeed. After the latest round of investment, the evaluation of Pocket FM has risen to Rs 116 crores a 6.3x jump from before.
About Pocket FM
Pocket FM is a Bengaluru based audiobook app that was founded on September 13, 2018. Rohan Nayak was the only founder of the app and brought in many investments since its arrival. At present, there are over 10k audiobooks and podcasts available on the platform. After all the investment made by huge investors, Rohan holds a 15.1% stake in the company.
The company offers four main categories of auido, audiobooks, podcasts, entertainment and self-help books. To cater to a wider range of Indian audience it also has support for three languages Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.
Details about the investment
The latest series A round was led by Tencent bringing in Rs 23.41 crores while Lightspeed ad Times Group investing Rs 11.22 crores and Rs 6.7 crores respectively. These fundings from Chinese investors were under the automatic route of foreign direct investment. Though, Tencent is a new investor in the round, Lightspeed and Times Group aren’t.
The audio company raised a combined Rs 4.61 crores from them in December 2018, 3 months after it was founded. Tencent is new for the company but it has its hands in another content space startup from India. In 2020, it invested Rs 76 crores in a Series C round in Bengaluru-based Pratilipi.
After the latest rounds Tencent holds a 20.1% shareholding in the company while Lightspeed and Times group holds 22.61% acompetnd 9.04% of the shares respectively. Some other share holders of the company are ESOP pool with 6.43%, Nishanth Srinivas with 14.47%, Prateek Dixit wwith 12.08% and DanaRam Meghawal with 0.16%.
Competion for the company
Though the consumption of audio content has increased there are many competitors in the space. Pratilipi backed by Tencent is one of the main contenders while few others are KuKu FM, Awaz, Headphone. All of these companies are doing well and will pose good competition to Pocket FM.
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