Kuku FM raises $21.8 millon in Series B funding

• ByStartupStory     |    September 21, 2022

On Wednesday, Mebigo Labs Pvt Ltd, which runs audio content platform Kuku FM, said it has raised $21.8 million in series B round led by Nandan Nilekani-led Fundamentum Partnership. Besides new investors Fundamentum and Paramark, existing investors Krafton, 3one4 Capital, Vertex, Verlinvest and FounderBank Capital have taken part in this round.

Kuku FM plans to utilise the funds to expand its catalogue, strengthen its content creation ecosystem and offer extra language choices to listeners. The company said in a release that it aims to achieve a base of 10 million+ paid subscribers by the end of 2023. 

“We have seen rapidly growing interest for content in regional languages in Tier II and III cities, semi-urban and rural segments. We aim to continue building a strong and diverse creator network that caters to this segment of the Bharat audience,” said Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder and chief executive, Kuku FM.

The company provides content creation tools, helping them to create, develop and post content on the platform for the content creators. The platform has widened its language offerings to include content in the following seven Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.The India-digitisation story has opened up opportunities across various sectors. The content ecosystem has particularly benefited from rapid growth in internet users. 

Kuku FM’s digital-first, tech-led approach, with its highlight on the ‘Bharat’ audience fits ideally  into our investment focus.,” said Prateek Jain, principal at Fundamentum Partnership.

Kuku FM marks Fundamentum’s first investment from the recently launched second fund. Fundamentum said it had raised $227 million for its second early-growth stage fund in August.

Kuku FM hosts more than 150,000 hours of content in various formats including audiobooks, stories, book summaries, courses, and podcasts as of now. The company claims that a vast part of the content is exclusive to the platform.

Kuku FM’s offering covers a wide range of genres including fiction and non-fiction audiobooks, personal finance, self-help education titles, entertainment, news, mythology, spirituality, learning and inspirational content, among others.

Founded in 2018 by Lal Chand Bisu, Vikas Goyal and Vinod Kumar Meena, Kuku FM is an audio listening platform with more than 1.5 million paid subscribers. According to the company, many of its users pay for educational and aspirational audio content.

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