India-based audio storytelling platform Pocket FM doubled its annualized revenue run rate over the past year, reaching $500 million. Co-founder and CEO Rohan Nayak said that 93% of the catalog is generated by AI, while AI is used in 99% of new content. On the platform, founded in 2018, story ideas and narration are still developed by human creators; AI transforms these ideas into completed content at scale.
Pocket FM’s AI chief, Vasu Sharma, said the company trained its own models for tasks such as creative writing and text-to-speech using production data accumulated over the years and listener engagement signals. According to Nayak, the technology reduced content production costs by approximately 80x. Content that previously took about a year to prepare—100 hours of it—can now be produced in a day.
The company’s more than 550,000 creators produce approximately 2.5 million hours of AI-assisted content annually. While the entire catalog consisted of approximately 100,000 hours two years ago, Pocket FM’s library has now grown to more than 770,000 audio series. Its 12-month revenue retention rate has also risen from 44% two years ago to 76%.
The annualized revenue run rate was approximately $250 million a year ago, $430 million in April, and has now reached $500 million. The company attributes the growth to increased use of AI, expansion into markets such as the U.K., Germany, and France, and the launch of user-generated content in the U.S. 96 titles generated more than $1 million in revenue, while 13 titles generated more than $10 million. Pocket FM has more than 250 million listeners in more than 20 countries, with the U.S. its largest market, accounting for approximately 70% of revenue. Approximately $85 million of revenue comes from advertising, while approximately $415 million comes from users unlocking episodes.
Pocket Entertainment’s three-month microdrama app, Pocket Saga, operates only in the U.S. and offers entirely AI-generated content. The app’s annualized revenue run rate has reached approximately $15 million. The company plans to enter at least two more entertainment formats over the next five years and adapt successful stories into books, television shows, and films. While new investment discussions are ongoing, the company is not planning an IPO within the next 24 months.
Why it matters
Pocket FM’s experience shows that production capacity in the audio storytelling industry is now determined not only by the size of creative teams but also by the extent to which models are integrated into the workflow. This structure accelerates the production of completed content while keeping human contribution at the ideation and direction stages; consequently, it changes the nature of the role for creators on the platform and how production will be evaluated. The fact that most of the revenue comes from listeners in the U.S. and episode unlocks reveals that growth is based more on a specific market and payment method than on geographic diversity. The key question that remains is whether the catalog expanded with AI can maintain the same level of user engagement and payment behavior in different markets, and how the targets for new formats and adaptations will connect to this existing structure.
Background
India is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published a news report mentioning it in the last 90 days; that article was dated September 3, 2026.