Rohan Nayak worked in investment banking and then as a product lead at Cube26. His job meant three to four hours of daily travel between Gurugram, Delhi and Noida. On those trips he saw that video and music had apps but stories did not.
Pocket FM was founded in 2018 with Prateek Dixit and Nishanth KS. A seed round of 4.61 crore rupees came in December 2018 from Lightspeed and Times Group. The first 18 months brought about 10,000 downloads, and the team moved from podcasts to episodic fiction.
Lockdown in 2020 lifted downloads to one crore in about three months. Goodwater Capital, Naver and Tanglin led a 65 million dollar round in March 2022 at about 390 million dollars. The company entered the US in 2022.
In March 2024 a 103 million dollar Series D led by Lightspeed and StepStone valued it at about 750 million dollars. FY24 global revenue passed 1,000 crore rupees with a net loss of 165 crore rupees. In March 2026 the company claimed a 400 million dollar annualised run rate.