Indian company Kuku raises $85 million as mobile content wars heat up

Kuku, an Indian storytelling platform backed by Google, has raised $85 million in new funding as it aims to expand its audio and video content offerings amid intense competition in the mobile-first content market in the South Asian country.

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. The round also saw participation from 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 exiting in part by selling their shares to new investors. This includes Google, which had a 2% stake and is now exiting entirely, Bisso told TechCrunch.

India, with more than a billion internet subscribers and nearly 700 million smartphone users, is witnessing explosive growth in digital content consumption, driven by ultra-low data costs and seamless micro-payments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently noticed this 1GB of data in India costs less than a cup of tea. 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 TV for the first time to become the largest segment of India’s media and entertainment sector, contributing 32% of total revenues – ₹802 billion (about $9.13 billion), according to Ernst & Young. a report (PDF) Released March. The report also expects digital media to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.2% between 2024 and 2027.

This growth potential has prompted players like Kuku to try new formats, including modern formats Famous little drama – Short, sequential video stories designed for mobile viewing. This format has spread across Indian startups and It even attracted the attention of global platformsWith dead She recently launched her own mini-drama series In the country it targets Generation Z audiences.

Founded in 2018, Kuku first gained traction among Indian content consumers With audio book presentations Through Coco FM. Since then, it has expanded its product portfolio and now operates two main platforms: Kuku TV, which presents feature-length stories as mini-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, up from 2 million at the time of its last round in 2023, the startup said.

The startup has seen a 2x growth in its average revenue per user and 10x overall growth since its last funding, Bisso said, without disclosing actual financial numbers. He noted that about 80% of its subscribers are from non-metropolitan cities.

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

Kuku provides access to its platforms through paid subscription plans, including INR 199 (about US$2) per month, INR 499 (about US$6) per quarter, and INR 1,499 (about US$17) per year. Bisso said the quarterly plan is the most popular among users.

Consumers spend an average of 100 minutes a 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 creators, and currently has around 10,000 creators. More than 50% of them come from small towns and cities outside the metro, Bisso said. He noted that the startup pays about 400 million rupees (about $4.5 million) per month to its creators.

Kuku FM led downloads and consumer spending among the startup’s portfolio, which includes Kuku TV, Kuku Bhakti (a devotional app featuring stories based on Hindu mythology), and StoRizz (focusing on small-scale dramas), according to data from Appfigures shared with TechCrunch.

As of September, Kuku has recorded over 229 million total 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, according to data from Appfigures.

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

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

The Bengaluru-based startup has built GenAI Studio to streamline the content creation process, use 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 of Kuku’s internal tools.

“We’re shifting most of the focus toward our tools, because now we have a lot of our own data,” Besso told TechCrunch. “We’re training these models using our own data, and then the output is actually much better than external tools.”

The startup does not use GenAI to produce content independently but instead uses it to help creators develop audio and video stories for its platforms. The tools help create titles, plots, scripts, dialogues and thumbnails, while the actual audio and video are produced by hand, Bisso said.

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

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

However, Coco faces stiff competition from local competitors, most notably Pocket FM, which offers similar audio and video storytelling formats. Pocket FM has filed several copyright infringement suits against Kuku. And more recently, the Delhi High Court Restraint Kuku has been able to release new episodes of five contested shows.

Bisso said the lawsuits brought by Pocket FM were aimed at distracting investors. “Every time, when we fundraise, they (Pocket FM) go to court and file a lawsuit. So this is not the first time,” Bisso 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 whether content creators are uploading copyrighted or third-party content.

“Some of the money (from this round) will also go toward improving these tools — and we plan to invest in technology that can identify when a creator is using someone else’s work,” Bisso said.

Compared to Pocket FM, Kuku had more downloads but saw a significant decline in in-app purchase revenue, according to Appfigures data. 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 outside the country, 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 Appfigures data.

However, Kuku plans to use its latest funding to strengthen its AI and data infrastructure, expand its 150-person workforce by hiring new technology and content talent, and deepen its creator partnerships and scale in India and abroad. The startup is already testing its offerings in the Middle East and the United States, with plans to expand into the United States in 2026.