The audio content platform Kuku FM has raised $19.5 million in Series B investment led by KRAFTON, Inc. of South Korea. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Vertex Ventures, and India Quotient also participated in the round, as well as new investors Founder Bank Capital and Verlinvest. Kuku FM has now raised a total of $25 million in fundraising since its founding in 2018. Kuku FM will utilise the cash acquired from this investment to expand its language offers and centralise content development, in addition to bolstering its existing capabilities. Three energetic entrepreneurs and ex-IITians created Kuku FM in 2018. It is India’s first platform that allows users to create, develop, and publish content.
Kuku FM’s site includes 150k hours of material across audiobooks, tales, book summaries, courses, and podcasts in five languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, and Gujarati). Kuku FM’s catalogue includes fiction and nonfiction audiobooks, self-help education titles, entertainment, news, mythology, spirituality, learning and inspirations, tales, poetry, and even jingles, among other genres. 50 percent of the material on Kuku FM is original to the platform and only available on Kuku FM, thanks to the site’s 30k producers.
“Kuku FM is pioneering a new category for audio content by bringing premium, unique, and immersive digital audio experiences to our users. We have seen an unprecedented consumption of audio content amongst users in our country with 70% users coming from Tier 2 cities. We are excited to witness the evolution of this genre,” Kuku FM Co-Founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu.
“We have a great synergy of vision with KRAFTON and are thrilled to have them on board as an integral investing partner. With this momentum, we are confident about hitting 10Mn active paid users by the end of this year and 50 Mn paid users by 2025,” he said.
Commenting on the investment, Sean Hyunil Sohn, Head of India Division at KRAFTON, Inc. said, “We are very excited to partner with Kuku FM and support them in their journey of building a strong creator and listener ecosystem which continues to grow at an amazing pace creating many unique local IPs. Here at KRAFTON Inc., we strongly believe that Indian IPs and regional Indian languages content growth will unlock the next big monetization opportunity not just in India but even globally in the long term and Kuku FM team is best placed to capture this opportunity in the audio category.”
