Kuku, India’s Storytelling Platform, Secures $85M Funding at $500M Valuation as Mobile Content Wars Intensify
Kuku Raises $85M Series C to Dominate India’s Mobile Audio and Video Content Market
Kuku, a rapidly scaling Indian storytelling platform, has successfully raised $85 million in fresh Series C funding. This significant capital injection is aimed at massively scaling its native audio and video content offerings amidst the escalating competition in the South Asian nation’s booming mobile-first content market.
The Series C round was led by Granite Asia (formerly GGV Capital). This investment successfully values Kuku at more than double its previous valuation, bringing it to approximately $500 million, as confirmed by Kuku founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu to TechCrunch. The round also attracted participation from major investors, including Vertex Growth Fund, Krafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India, and Bitkraft.
The latest round also involved key secondary transactions, which saw some of Kuku’s earliest investors partially exit by selling their shares to the new investors. Notably, Google, which had held a small stake under 2%, is now exiting its investment in Kuku entirely, Bisu told TechCrunch.
The Digital Media Gold Rush in India
India, a country boasting over a billion internet subscribers and approximately 700 million smartphone users, is experiencing an explosive period of digital content consumption growth. This surge is fueled by ultra-low data costs and a simple, widely adopted digital transaction system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently highlighted that 1GB of data in India costs less than a common cup of tea. The government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has made instant digital payments easy and universally accessible. This powerful combination is not only attracting global platforms like YouTube and Instagram but is also providing local platforms like Kuku with a crucial competitive edge in reaching mass audiences through local Indian languages.
The data confirms this trend: in 2024, digital media surpassed television for the first time, becoming the largest revenue segment of India’s media and entertainment sector, contributing 32% of total revenues—a staggering ₹802 billion (around $9.13 billion), according to an EY report released in March. This report projects that digital media will sustain this momentum, growing at an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2% between 2024 and 2027.
This immense growth potential is prompting players like Kuku to innovate with new formats, including the recently popularized microdramas—short, vertically serialized video stories specifically designed for seamless mobile viewing. This format has rapidly been adopted by Indian startups and has even drawn the attention of global platforms, with Meta recently launching its own microdrama series in the country aimed at Gen Z audiences.
Kuku’s Strategy: Audiobooks, Microdramas, and Generative AI
Founded in 2018, the Bengaluru-based startup initially gained strong traction among Indian consumers with its core audiobook offerings via Kuku FM. Since then, it has successfully expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms: Kuku TV, which presents long-form stories as bite-sized video episodes in a vertical format, and Kuku FM, which remains focused on audio-first shows. The platforms provide content in over eight Indian languages and have surpassed 10 million paid subscribers, up sharply from two million at the time of its last round in 2023.
Bisu confirmed the company has seen 2X growth in its average revenue per user (ARPU) and a massive 10X overall growth since its last funding round. He noted that a crucial 80% of its paid subscribers are located in non-metropolitan cities. Users spend an average of 100 minutes daily on Kuku’s platforms, with over 90% of subscribers remaining active month over month.
Kuku offers paid subscription plans, with the quarterly plan (₹499/about $6) being the most popular. The platform sources its content from an ecosystem of approximately 10,000 third-party content creators, over 50% of whom hail from small towns. The startup currently pays roughly ₹400 million (around $4.5 million) monthly to its creators.
Appfigures data indicates that the Kuku FM app has led in both downloads and consumer spending within the company’s portfolio, which also includes Kuku TV and specialty apps. As of September, Kuku recorded over 229 million total downloads and generated more than $4 million in consumer spending. In 2025 alone, the startup saw over 134 million downloads—a 533% year-over-year increase—and $1.9 million in consumer spending, up 156%. Bisu clarified that, in terms of actual usage, Kuku TV is now larger than Kuku FM, accounting for over 60% of total consumption.
The startup has strategically invested in building a dedicated GenAI studio to streamline content creation, employing AI tools for efficient multilingual translation and on-demand ad production. The studio utilizes software from companies like OpenAI and ElevenLabs, alongside Kuku’s in-house tools. Bisu told TechCrunch that they are shifting focus towards their own proprietary tools, training them on their accumulated data, which yields better output than external services. Kuku uses GenAI to assist creators in generating titles, plots, scripts, and dialogues, with Bisu stating that 70% to 80% of the work at Kuku is powered by GenAI.
Competition, Litigation, and Future Plans
Kuku faces intense competition from local rivals, most notably Pocket FM, which operates in similar storytelling formats. Pocket FM has filed multiple copyright infringement lawsuits against Kuku, with the Delhi High Court recently restraining Kuku from releasing new episodes of five disputed shows. Bisu countered that the lawsuits were merely an attempt by Pocket FM to distract investors during fundraising periods, noting that Kuku has a dedicated team and proprietary tools to manually and technologically review all content for violations.
Appfigures data highlights a key difference: while Kuku has higher overall downloads, Pocket FM generates the vast majority of its revenue (98%) from outside India, despite 82% of its downloads being domestic.
Kuku plans to use its new $85M funding to enhance its AI and data infrastructure, hire new talent for its 150-person workforce, deepen creator partnerships, and strategically scale in India and beyond. The company is already testing its offerings in the Middle East and the U.S., with plans to officially scale in the U.S. in 2026.
What do you think of Kuku’s dual focus on audio and vertical video microdramas to win the Indian mobile content market? Will their massive GenAI investment pay off against rivals like Pocket FM? Leave a comment below!
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