India’s Kuku rakes in $85 million as mobile content wars intensify | TechCrunch

Kuku, an Indian storytelling platform backed by Google, has raised $85 million in new funding to scale its audio and video content offering amid increasing competition in the South Asian country’s mobile-first content market.

The Series C round, led by Granite Asia (formerly GGV Capital), values ​​Kuku at more than double its previous valuation to around $500 million, Kuku founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu confirmed to TechCrunch. Also participating in the round were Vertex Growth Fund, Krafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India and Bitkraft.

The latest round also included secondary transactions, with some of Kuku’s early investors partially withdrawing by selling their shares to new investors. This includes Google, which had a stake of less than 2% and is now shutting down completely, Bisu told TechCrunch.

India, home to more than a billion internet subscribers and approximately 700 million smartphone users, is experiencing tremendous growth in digital content consumption, driven by ultra-low data costs and seamless micropayments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently noted this 1GB of data costs less than a cup of tea in India. The country’s government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) – a system that enables instant digital payments between bank accounts – has also made digital transactions easy and widely accessible. This combination has made the Indian market attractive to global players like Instagram and YouTube, while also giving local platforms like Kuku a competitive advantage in reaching large audiences through content in local Indian languages.

In 2024, digital media overtook television for the first time to become the largest segment of India’s media and entertainment sector, accounting for 32% of total revenue: ₹802 billion (about $9.13 billion), according to an EY report (PDF) released in March. The report also predicts that digital media will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.2% between 2024 and 2027.

This growth potential has pushed players like Kuku to experiment with new formats, including the recent ones popularized microdramas — short, serialized video stories designed for mobile viewing. The format has caught on with Indian startups and even caught the attention of global platformswith Meta recently launched its own microdrama series in the country aimed at the Gen Z audience.

Founded in 2018, Kuku first gained traction among Indian content consumers with its audiobook offering through Kuku FM. It has since expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms: Kuku TV, which presents long-form stories as bite-sized episodes in a vertical format, and Kuku FM, which focuses on audio-first shows. The platforms offer content in more than eight Indian languages ​​and have crossed 10 million paid subscribers, the startup said, up from two million at the time of the last round in 2023.

The startup saw a doubling of average revenue per user and tenfold growth since its last funding, Bisu said, without disclosing actual financial figures. He noted that about 80% of subscribers come from non-metro cities.

About 60% of Kuku’s subscriber base is male and 40% female, Bisu said, adding that most subscribers are between 25 and 35 years old.

Kuku offers access to its platforms through paid subscriptions, including ₹199 (approximately $2) per month, ₹499 (approximately $6) per quarter, and ₹1,499 (approximately $17) per year. Bisu said the quarterly plan is the most popular among users.

Consumers spend an average of 100 minutes per day on Kuku’s platforms, the founder said, adding that more than 90% of the startup’s subscribers remain active month after month.

Kuku sources content through third-party content creators and currently has about 10,000 creators on board. Of them, more than 50% are from small towns and non-metro cities, Bisu said. He noted that the startup pays around ₹400 million (approximately $4.5 million) to its creators every month.

The Kuku FM app leads in downloads and consumer spending across the startup’s portfolio, which includes Kuku TV, Kuku Bhakti (a devotional app featuring stories based on Hindu mythology) and StoRizz (focused on bite-sized microdramas), according to data from Appfigures shared with TechCrunch.

As of September, Kuku had recorded a total of more than 229 million downloads, including 122 million for Kuku FM and 88 million for Kuku TV. Kuku’s apps generated more than $4 million in consumer spending, including $2.8 million from Kuku FM and $1.3 million from Kuku TV, Appfigures data shows.

In 2025 alone, the startup saw more than 134 million downloads — up 533% year-over-year — and $1.9 million in consumer spending, up 156%, according to data from Appfigurs.

Bisu told TechCrunch that Kuku TV is larger than Kuku FM in terms of consumption, accounting for more than 60% of total usage.

The Bengaluru-based startup has built a GenAI studio to streamline content creation, using AI tools for multilingual translation and on-demand ad production. The studio includes software from AI companies including OpenAI and ElevenLabs, as well as some internal tools from Kuku.

“We’re shifting most of our focus to our tools because we now have a lot of our own data. We train those models with our own data, and then the output is actually much better than that of external tools,” Bisu told TechCrunch.

The startup does not use GenAI to produce content autonomously, but instead uses it to help creators develop audio and video stories for its platforms. The tools help generate titles, plots, scripts, dialogues and thumbnails, while the actual audio and video production is done manually, Bisu said.

He added that 70% to 80% of the work at Kuku is powered by GenAI, while the remaining 20% ​​is still done manually.

Without naming specific individuals, Bisu said the startup plans to use the new funding to improve its content by bringing in celebrities, including film and television personalities.

Still, Kuku faces stiff competition from local rivals, especially Pocket FM, which offers similar audio and visual storytelling formats. Pocket FM has filed multiple copyright infringement lawsuits against Kuku. Most recently the Delhi High Court subdued Kuku from releasing new episodes of five disputed shows.

Bisu said Pocket FM’s lawsuits were aimed at distracting investors. “Every time, when we do a fundraiser, they [Pocket FM] go to a court and they will file a lawsuit. So it is not the first time,” Bisu told TechCrunch.

He added that Kuku has a dedicated team that manually reviews all uploaded content to check for copyright violations. The startup has also developed tools to detect if creators are uploading copyrighted or third-party content.

‘Some of the money [from this round] We will also improve these tools. We plan to invest in technology that can identify when a creator is using someone else’s work,” Bisu said.

Compared to Pocket FM, Kuku had more downloads but saw significantly lower revenue from in-app purchases, data from Appfigures shows. While India accounts for the majority of Kuku’s downloads and revenue, Pocket FM generates 82% of its downloads from India but gets 98% of its revenue from abroad, according to Appfigures.

While Kuku saw significant growth in both downloads and consumer spending in 2025, Pocket FM saw a 21% year-over-year decline in downloads to 38 million, but a 61% increase in consumer spending to $100 million, according to Appfigurs data.

That said, Kuku plans to use its latest funding to enhance its AI and data infrastructure, expand its workforce of 150 people by hiring new talent in technology and content, and deepen its creator partnerships and scale in India and abroad. The startup is already testing its offering in the Middle East and the US, with plans to scale up in the US in 2026.