Audio OTT platform Pocket FM has raised $65 million in a series C funding round from a group of investors. The funding was led by Goodwater Capital, Naver, and an existing investor – Tanglin Venture Partners. As per the platform, the funding will be utilised to expand into new languages, invest in technology, scale creator community, and help creators monetise on the platform.
“We are announcing our series C funding. This is a validation of our market leadership and trust in our execution capabilities. Audio consumption has seen exponential growth over the last year, and we are on a mission to build the largest audio OTT platform,” Rohan Nayak, co-founder and CEO, Pocket FM, said.
Before this round, Pocket FM had raised $28.6 million in previous rounds, from existing investors of the platform such as Lightspeed, Tencent, Times Group, and Tanglin Venture Partners.
“In addition to audio entertainment, we saw a 12 times growth in consumption of self-help books, audio courses. Users are looking for high quality knowledge content to up-skill themselves. With this investment, we are looking to grow our creator community further, be the biggest audio destination for entertainment and knowledge, and target five million paying users in the next 12 months,” Nishanth KS, co-founder and COO, Pocket FM, stated.
“Pocket FM with its creator-first platform, is aiming to lead this wave of growth in the audio OTT space and fuel the next generation of entertainment experiences. We’re partnering with them in the entertainment and content market as they build a robust audio ecosystem for audiences and creators alike, and to support the company in its next chapter of growth,” YongJung (YJ) Park, investment director, Naver Corporation commented. The Pocket FM platform claims to offer over 1,00,000 hours of long-format content, audio series, stories, novels, podcasts and knowledge shows in eight languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, English, Kannada, and Marathi.
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