India’s Pocket FM doubles revenue run rate to $500M as AI powers 93% of audio content
techcrunch ·
Pocket FM, an Indian audio storytelling platform, has doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500 million over the past year while increasingly relying on artificial intelligence for content production. AI now powers 93% of its overall catalog and is used for 99% of new content, according to co-founder and CEO Rohan Nayak. The startup, which launched in 2018, still depends on human creators for ideas and storytelling, using AI to scale those concepts into finished content; Nayak said the goal of building lasting intellectual property requires humans. AI head Vasu Sharma, a former Meta and Tesla scientist, said Pocket FM trained its own models for tasks including creative writing and text-to-speech using years of production data and listener engagement signals. Nayak said AI has made content production roughly 80 times cheaper, and 100 hours of content that once took about a year can now be produced in a day. More than 550,000 creators now produce about 2.5 million hours of AI-powered content annually, and the 12-month revenue retention rate has risen to 76% from 44% two years ago. The U.S. is Pocket FM's largest market, accounting for about 70% of annualized revenue, and parent company Pocket Entertainment is expanding its AI-driven model into microdramas through its Pocket Saga app, which has reached roughly a $15 million annualized run rate.
techcrunch