Audio Pioneers
Pocket FM today serves a global community of 250 million+ listeners across multiple languages and markets.
NISHANTH KS 34 CO-FOUNDER, ROHAN NAYAK 33 CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, PRATEEK DIXIT 34 CO-FOUNDER, POCKET FM
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Audio content has continued to gain traction in new digital avatars. India’s Pocket FM has rapidly risen to prominence, fundamentally disrupting the digital entertainment landscape. While it has established itself as a pioneering platform by offering a unique and diverse content portfolio, it has successfully carved out a new niche in the market, subsequently empowering a new generation of content creators.
Pocket FM is the brainchild of three first-generation entrepreneurs who backed their conviction to build and scale consumer internet products in fast-moving startup environments. The experience helped the founders understand the nitty-gritty of platform building – how platforms grow under real constraints, how user habits form over time, and how small product decisions can have an outsized impact at scale.
“We did not come from traditional publishing or media. In hindsight, that distance was helpful. It allowed us to approach storytelling without the weight of legacy thinking. We looked at it through the lens of distribution, discovery, and sustainability, and asked simple questions about how stories travel, how audiences engage, and how creators can build careers over time. Those early years shaped our approach in very practical ways. We learned that scale has to be designed intentionally and stay close to real user behavior. And we also learned that creativity thrives when the underlying systems are stable, predictable, and fair,” the founders told Entrepreneur India.
In the preceding days of building Pocket FM, the trio was quick to spot the trend that people still love long-form stories, but modern life leaves little uninterrupted time. Audio allows stories to fit naturally into daily moments like commuting, walking, or winding down at night. At the same time, they saw that storytellers lacked platforms that helped them reach audiences and build sustainable careers.
“The intersection of these two realities became the foundation of Pocket FM. Yes, long-form storytelling was either locked behind traditional publishing or constrained by high production costs in visual media. Audio had the potential to democratize storytelling, but the ecosystem lacked structure, discoverability, and monetization. We wanted to build a platform where stories could be created faster, distributed globally, and sustained economically for creators,” the founders added.
What sets Pocket FM apart in a crowded audio streaming platform market is the focus on building an IP-first, creator-led storytelling platform where AI is treated as infrastructure rather than a substitute for creativity. The founders say they leverage AI to remove friction from the creative process and to help stories travel globally. It supports creators in structuring long-form narratives, maintaining quality and consistency, and localizing content across languages and markets. Creative intent and control always remain with the creator. This approach allows them to build long-running franchises.
“Our belief is simple. Technology should expand what humans can create. That principle shapes how we use AI and how we are building Pocket FM for the long term,” the founders said.
Pocket FM today serves a global community of 250 million+ listeners across multiple languages and markets. The platform hosts over 425,000 hours of storytelling and supports a diverse ecosystem of over 300,000 creators, including writers and voice artists from around the world.
The year 2025 marked a disciplined shift towards sustainable growth for Pocket FM, expanding into new markets, strengthening the core business, improving unit economics, and investing for long-term scale. Its several long-form audio franchises hit key milestones, validating the focus on enduring IP over short-term trends. Addressing new challenges from scale, it strengthened leadership, governance, and internal systems. By year-end, Pocket FM achieved greater clarity, resilience, and long-term intent.
Founders say that the next phase of growth for Pocket FM will be driven by a combination of deeper engagement, geographic expansion, and continued investment in creator infrastructure. They are also looking to tap into markets where they already have strong traction while expanding into new geographies, particularly parts of Europe. And at the same time, the company is investing in AI innovation that assists in creation and localization to help stories travel across languages and cultures more efficiently, without losing their emotional depth.
“Over the longer term, we are focused on building enduring storytelling IP that can extend beyond audio into other formats. Our ambition is to create a global storytelling company where powerful stories can originate anywhere, scale responsibly, and resonate with audiences around the world,” the founders added.
Audio content has continued to gain traction in new digital avatars. India’s Pocket FM has rapidly risen to prominence, fundamentally disrupting the digital entertainment landscape. While it has established itself as a pioneering platform by offering a unique and diverse content portfolio, it has successfully carved out a new niche in the market, subsequently empowering a new generation of content creators.
Pocket FM is the brainchild of three first-generation entrepreneurs who backed their conviction to build and scale consumer internet products in fast-moving startup environments. The experience helped the founders understand the nitty-gritty of platform building – how platforms grow under real constraints, how user habits form over time, and how small product decisions can have an outsized impact at scale.
“We did not come from traditional publishing or media. In hindsight, that distance was helpful. It allowed us to approach storytelling without the weight of legacy thinking. We looked at it through the lens of distribution, discovery, and sustainability, and asked simple questions about how stories travel, how audiences engage, and how creators can build careers over time. Those early years shaped our approach in very practical ways. We learned that scale has to be designed intentionally and stay close to real user behavior. And we also learned that creativity thrives when the underlying systems are stable, predictable, and fair,” the founders told Entrepreneur India.
