Audio content platform Kuku FM raises $21.8 mn, targets 10 mn paid subscribers

Bengaluru, Sep 21

Audio content platform Kuku FM on Wednesday said it has raised $21.8 million in Series B1 funding round, led by The Fundamentum Partnership, which will be utilised to strengthen content creation ecosystem and offer more language choices to listeners.

Kuku FM aims to achieve a base of over 10 million paid subscribers by the end of 2023.

"We have seen rapidly growing interest for content in regional languages in Tier 2 and 3 cities, semi-urban and rural segments. We aim to continue building a strong and diverse creator network that caters to this segment of the Bharat audience," said Lal Chand Bisu, Co-founder and CEO, Kuku FM.

Along with new investors Fundamentum and Paramark, existing investors KRAFTON, Inc, 3one4 Capital, Vertex, Verlinvest and FounderBank Capital also participated in this round.

Earlier this year, Kuku FM raised $19.5 million led by KRAFTON with Google, Verlinvest and other investors.

"In its four-year journey, Kuku FM has built a business with robust fundamentals, strong monetization model and a national creator-listener community," said Prateek Jain, Principal, Fundamentum Partnership.

Founded in 2018 by Bisu, Vikas Goyal and Vinod Kumar Meena, Kuku FM is currently India's largest audio platform with more than 1.5 million paid subscribers.

The platform has content in seven Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam).

At present, Kuku FM hosts more than 150,000 hours of content in various formats including audiobooks, stories, book summaries, courses, and podcasts .