- ByStartupStory | February 20, 2024
Pocket FM unveiled its online novel reading platform, Pocket Novel, on February 20, marking its expansion into new entertainment categories and formats. The launch follows a year-long beta phase, during which the company claims to have attracted over 150,000 writers, with top performers earning incomes exceeding $2,500 per month. According to the announcement, Pocket FM plans to invest $40 million towards Pocket Novel as it aims to achieve a global annualized revenue run rate (ARR) of $100 million by 2025. In 2023, readers conducted over 1 million transactions on the platform, purchasing entire novels or individual chapters written by the community of writers.
Pocket FM now enters into competition with its Bengaluru-based counterpart, Pratilipi, a digital storytelling platform backed by investors such as Krafton, Tencent, and Nexus Venture Partners. Notably, Pratilipi expanded into audio entertainment following its acquisition of podcast platform IVM Podcasts in November 2020.
Rohan Nayak, co-founder of Pocket FM, emphasized the significance of this launch in the company’s intellectual property (IP) playbook, stating, “We are building an ecosystem that shapes the essence of entertainment which specializes in discovering and distributing unique and unheard stories.” He highlighted plans to leverage insights from the audio series growth to cultivate a dynamic entertainment ecosystem, with an emphasis on diverse content categories.
Nayak outlined the company’s ambitious goals, aiming to build a community of 1 million writers and expand its novel library to 2 million by 2025. During the beta phase, more than 2 percent of novels attracted over 500,000 reads, indicating strong reader engagement. Popular genres on the platform include Romance, Drama, Suspense, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi.
Pocket FM boasts over 130 million listeners globally, consuming over 100,000 hours of long-format audio content daily across various genres and languages. The company reported significant transaction and streaming milestones in 2023, with over 20 million transactions and 75 billion minutes of audio content streamed during the year.
Investors in Pocket FM include Lightspeed, Tencent, Tanglin Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, and South Korean internet giant Naver. To date, the company has raised $109.5 million, with notable funding rounds in May 2023 and March 2022.
