Indian audio story platform Pocket FM is integrating AI more deeply into its content production process. The co-founder of the company and CEO Rohan Nayak stated that the platform's annual revenue has doubled over the past year, rising from approximately $250 million to $500 million.
AI Covers most of the content.
Currently, AI has covered approximately 93% of the content directory of Pocket FM, and is involved in the production of 99% of the new content. The company states that the focus at this stage is not on making AI generate works completely independently, but rather on building tools around the creative process, while continuing to retain human involvement in story development.
The person in charge of AI at Pocket FM stated that the company has trained its own models for tasks such as creative writing and text-to-speech conversion. The training is based on years of production data as well as user listening behavior signals.
Cost reduction drives content expansion
According to Nayak, AI has reduced the content production cost by about 80 times. In the past, it took about a year to produce 100 hours of content, but now it can be completed within a single day. This has also directly increased the platform's supply capacity.
- The number of creators exceeds 550,000.
- In the year AI, approximately 2.5 million hours of content were produced.
- The platform has a cumulative collection of over 770,000 audio works.
Two years ago, the total content library of Pocket FM was approximately 100,000 hours. As the amount of content has increased rapidly, the company reports that user retention has also improved, with the 12-month revenue retention rate rising from 44% two years ago to 76%.
The US market accounts for about 70% of the total.
Pocket FM initially focused on India as its core market, and now it has over 250 million listeners in more than 20 countries. According to the company, the United States has become its largest market, accounting for about 70% of its annual revenue. In the past year, the growth rate in the U.S. market has been around 70%.
The company is also expanding in the UK, Germany, and France, and has launched a user-generated content model in the United States. Pocket FM indicates that there are already 96 works on the platform that have generated revenue of over $1 million each, with 13 of them generating over $10 million each.
Short drama business is advancing in parallel.
Pocket FM The parent company Pocket Entertainment is attempting to replicate this AI content model to more forms of entertainment. Its micro-short drama app Pocket Saga, which was launched three months ago, currently has an annualized revenue run rate of about 15 million US dollars.
Unlike Pocket FM, the current content of Pocket Saga is entirely generated by AI and is only available in the United States. The company is also adapting audio stories that performed well on Pocket FM into AI videos, without using the traditional live-action filming process.
The company is in talks about new financing.
While expanding its business, Pocket Entertainment is also in talks with investors for a new round of financing. Previously, reports indicated that the company was seeking to raise $100 million to $120 million, with a valuation of around $2 billion.
Nayak did not deny financing talks, but stated that the company currently does not have an immediate need for financing. He did not disclose the specific amount of financing or valuation, only mentioning that if new funds are secured, they will mainly be invested in AI capacity building and new forms of entertainment.
Additional information:The company stated that it has achieved profitability and generated positive cash flow according to the adjusted metrics, but did not disclose specific figures such as profits, cash flow, or profit margins; management also mentioned that there are no plans for IPO in the next 24 months, and they may choose to list their shares in India or the United States in the future.
