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MUMBAI: Pocket Entertainment has crossed $500 million in annualised revenue run rate (ARR), marking a 70 per cent year-on-year growth as artificial intelligence reshapes how entertainment content is created, produced and scaled.
The company, which operates Pocket FM and Pocket Saga, said its growth is being driven by the continued expansion of Pocket FM and the increasing use of AI across content creation, production, personalisation and distribution.
The company said the milestone has been achieved with a healthy bottom line, while retention on Pocket FM has also improved significantly.
“AI fundamentally changes the economics of entertainment businesses. Crossing $500 million in ARR, with a healthy bottom line, is a testament to that. Interestingly, Pocket FM has scaled while improving retention alongside it,” said Lightspeed partner Harsha Kumar.
Pocket FM remains the main growth engine for Pocket Entertainment. Revenue retention on the platform has risen from 44 per cent to 76 per cent, indicating stronger and more sustained engagement among listeners.
The platform has also expanded its content through licensing and adaptation partnerships. One such collaboration with Disney Publishing APAC brought 36 Marvel audio series episodes to Hindi-speaking listeners.
Over the past year, Pocket FM has expanded into the UK, Germany and France, while broadening its catalogue across genres including thriller and fantasy. It has also launched user-generated content in the US, increasing the volume and range of stories available to audiences.
That expansion is producing a growing portfolio of high-performing franchises. Pocket Entertainment said 96 titles have individually generated more than $1 million in revenue, including 13 titles that have crossed the $10 million mark.
Pocket FM’s ecosystem now includes more than 550,000 creators, supported by a purpose-built AI technology stack and real-time audience insights covering creation, production, localisation and distribution.
The company said these insights help identify stories that are resonating with audiences, allowing promising intellectual property to be scaled more quickly across markets.
AI has also shortened the time needed to launch content in new markets from around 12 months to two months, enabling successful stories to move across languages and geographies at a faster pace.
The creator ecosystem currently generates more than 2.6 million annualised hours of content, while Pocket FM’s library has grown to more than 770,000 titles across eight categories.
Pocket Entertainment CEO and co-founder Rohan Nayak said AI is opening entertainment creation to a much broader pool of storytellers.
“AI is creating an entirely new era of entertainment, one defined by an abundance of high-quality content, the rise of single-person studios capable of creating blockbusters, and experiences hyper-personalised for every individual,” said Pocket Entertainment CEO and co-founder Rohan Nayak.
Nayak added that creators are already building stories capable of generating millions of dollars, a scale that traditionally required large studios, teams, budgets and years of production.
“We believe the next global entertainment phenomenon can come from anywhere, reach millions of people across the world, and still feel uniquely made for each of them,” he said.
Pocket FM’s audience engagement has also continued to grow. Listeners now spend an average of 155 minutes a day on the platform, while 51 per cent of weekly active users engage with it daily.
As AI lowers the cost and time involved in creating and localising content, Pocket Entertainment is betting on a model where more creators can develop IP, test stories with audiences and take successful entertainment franchises across borders.
With more than half a million creators already contributing to its ecosystem, Pocket Entertainment is positioning AI not just as a production tool, but as the engine behind a new, more scalable entertainment economy.
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