Across India, people of all ages consume a variety of audio content, including music, podcasts, audiobooks, and audio series, while taking their morning walk or running errands around the house. Most of the time, it’s not connected to a listening device. Whether you’re at home, outdoors, in office downtime, commuting, or traveling.
Smita Chowdhury, a 34-year-old IT professional, uses audio streaming platforms for daily entertainment while commuting to work or busy with household chores. Recently, she purchased a one-month subscription on the leading audio platform and became hooked on her audio show Thriller.
Kuku FM, Pocket FM, HubHopper, Khabri, Suno India are among the major players in the Indian audio OTT industry, with daily streams surging 1.6x in the last three years and expected to reach 460 million in FY23. It is said that it has reached 10,000. Red Seer Report.
And according to market intelligence platform Tracxn, these audio OTT platforms have raised $182.7 million in funding over the past three years.
It raised $41.4 million in 2023 alone.
“The COVID-19 pandemic in FY21 and FY22 accelerated the growth of audio OTT, adding more than 50 million music listeners, including young age groups as well as those aged 40 and above.” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, Partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants.
Audio streaming app Pocket FM said in its ‘Entertainment Insights’ report that almost 41% of its listeners preferred audio series that cut across genres, such as romance, horror, thrillers and drama.
local demand
Audio OTT players are capturing the Indian market with their content offerings in regional languages, personalization features based on user behavior and preferences, and importantly, affordable pricing.
In particular, regional language content has been a major factor driving the popularity of audio OTT platforms.
“Over the past four years, vernacular music has experienced the fastest growth, accounting for 34 percent of music streaming in FY23,” according to a report by Redseer.
“The average listening time for music in India is 22 minutes, but the average listening time on our platform is close to 70 minutes per day,” says Vikas, who co-founded Mumbai-based Kuku FM in 2018. says founder Lal Chand Bis. Goyal and Vinod Kumar Meena. The platform hosts over 1.5 million hours of content, ranging from stories to book summaries, audiobooks, educational courses, and podcasts.
Kuku FM’s audiobooks are available in both nonfiction and fiction genres, including educational materials, entertainment, news, jingles, personal development and spirituality, poetry, and mythology.
The startup says it works with around 30,000 creators to generate audio content in English, Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and other regional languages.
HubHopper, founded by Gautam Raj Anand in 2015, also emphasizes regional accents. The audio platform hosts over 50 million hours of podcasts, news, audiobooks, and more in around 15 languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada.
Every month, more than 20 million users listen to more than 1.5 million podcast episodes created and distributed by the New Delhi-based company.
Kuku FM started monetizing content in January 2021 and currently offers two subscription models: 99 yen per month and 899 yen per year. More than 50% of his content is exclusive to paying customers.
With a user base primarily in Tier II and Tier III cities, it currently has 2.7 million paying subscribers and annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $15 million for the year ending March 2024.
funding interest
Despite the funding winter putting a pinch on the country’s startup ecosystem since September 2022, Kuku FM closes a $22 million Series B1 round and a $25 million Series C round, boosting Mumbai companies’ The total VC investment in was $72.3 million.
Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership has led two funding rounds totaling $20 million for Kuku FM in the past 12 months.
“Kuku FM has created a niche category that caters to the unique and rapidly evolving demands of India’s new digital natives. Additionally, co-founder Bisu and his team have focused on unit economics and robust fundamentals. We have created a business model where we put our money where our mouth is,” said Prateek Jain, Principal, Fundamentum Partnership.
freemium model
Bangalore-based Pocket FM, founded in 2018 by Rohan Nayak, Nishanth KS and Prateek Dixit, is an audio streaming platform with over 100,000 hours of content and over 15 million monthly active users.
The platform hosts over 1,000 audio series, with each series typically containing 300 to 500 episodes.
“With average listener engagement of over 110 minutes per day, we outpace any other digital entertainment format. We are on track to achieve $100 million ARR in 2023,” said CEO Nayak. Masu.
Its content is available in eight languages: Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, English, Kannada, Bangla, Marathi, and includes romance, astrology, self-help, crime, horror, biography, and more. offered across genres.
Pocket FM operates on a freemium model, offering a fixed number of free episodes of each audio series within 24 hours. Listeners can then pay to access more episodes.
“This is facilitated by Coinbase’s system, which allows users to purchase coins at different price points. Pricing is tailored to the local market, with trial packs starting from ₹9 in India.” says Nayak.
As the buzz around audio OTT grows and smaller players enter the space, industry players believe that platforms will become increasingly niche and personalized to attract more listeners and keep them hooked. We look forward to providing you with content.