Kuku, an Indian storytelling platform backed by Google, has raised eighty-five million dollars in fresh funding. The company aims to scale its audio and video content offerings amid intensifying competition in India’s mobile-first content market.
This Series C round was led by Granite Asia, formerly known as GGV Capital. The investment values Kuku at more than double its previous valuation, reaching around five hundred million dollars, according to founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu. The round also saw participation from Vertex Growth Fund, Krafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India, and Bitkraft. The latest round included secondary transactions, allowing some of Kuku’s early investors to partially exit by selling their shares to new investors. This includes Google, which held under a two percent stake and is now exiting entirely.
India is home to over a billion internet subscribers and around seven hundred million smartphone users. The country is experiencing massive growth in digital content consumption, driven by ultra-low data costs and seamless micropayments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently remarked that one gigabyte of data in India costs less than a cup of tea. The government-backed Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, enables instant digital payments between bank accounts and has made transactions 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 edge in reaching mass audiences with 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. It contributed thirty-two percent of total revenues, which was eight hundred and two billion rupees, or around nine point one three billion dollars, according to an EY report released in March. The report also projects that digital media will grow at a compound annual growth rate of eleven point two percent between 2024 and 2027.
This growth potential has prompted players like Kuku to experiment with new formats, including the popularized microdramas. These are short, serialized video stories designed for mobile viewing. The format has caught on across Indian startups and attracted the attention of global platforms, with Meta recently launching its own microdrama series in the country aimed at Gen Z audiences.
Founded in 2018, Kuku first gained traction among Indian content consumers with its audiobook offerings through Kuku FM. Since then, it has expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms. Kuku TV presents long-form stories as bite-sized episodes in a vertical format, while Kuku FM focuses on audio-first shows. The platforms provide content in more than eight Indian languages and have surpassed ten million paid subscribers, up from two million at the time of its last funding round in 2023.
The startup saw two times growth in its average revenue per user and ten times overall growth since its last funding, Bisu said, though he did not disclose actual financial figures. He noted that around eighty percent of its subscribers are from non-metropolitan cities. Around sixty percent of Kuku’s subscriber base is male and forty percent female, with most subscribers between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.
Kuku offers access to its platforms through paid subscription plans. These include one hundred and ninety-nine rupees, or around two dollars, per month; four hundred and ninety-nine rupees, about six dollars, per quarter; and one thousand four hundred and ninety-nine rupees, approximately seventeen dollars, per year. Bisu said that the quarterly plan is the most popular among users. Consumers spend an average of one hundred minutes daily on Kuku’s platforms, and over ninety percent of the startup’s subscribers remain active month over month.
Kuku sources content through third-party creators and currently has around ten thousand creators on board. Over fifty percent of them are from small towns and non-metro cities. The startup pays around four hundred million rupees, roughly four point five million dollars, monthly to its creators.
According to data from Appfigures, the Kuku FM app has led in downloads and consumer spending among the startup’s portfolio, which also includes Kuku TV, Kuku Bhakti, a devotional app, and StoRizz, which is focused on bite-sized microdramas. As of September, Kuku had recorded over two hundred and twenty-nine million total downloads. This included one hundred and twenty-two million for Kuku FM and eighty-eight million for Kuku TV. Kuku’s apps generated more than four million dollars in consumer spending, with two point eight million dollars from Kuku FM and one point three million dollars from Kuku TV.
In 2025 alone, the startup saw over one hundred and thirty-four million downloads, a five hundred and thirty-three percent year-over-year increase. Consumer spending reached one point nine million dollars, up one hundred and fifty-six percent. Bisu told TechCrunch that, in terms of consumption, Kuku TV is larger than Kuku FM, accounting for over sixty percent of total usage.
The Bengaluru-based startup has built a generative AI studio to streamline content creation. It employs AI tools for multilingual translation and on-demand ad production. The studio includes software from AI companies like OpenAI and ElevenLabs, as well as some of Kuku’s in-house tools. Bisu stated they are shifting focus towards their own tools because training models with their own data produces a much better output.
The startup does not use generative AI to autonomously produce content. Instead, it employs the technology to assist creators in developing audio and video stories. The tools help generate titles, plots, scripts, dialogues, and thumbnails, while the actual audio and video production is done manually. Bisu said that seventy to eighty percent of the work at Kuku is powered by generative AI, with the remaining twenty percent done manually.
Bisu said the startup plans to use the new funding to enhance its content by bringing in celebrities, including film and television personalities, though he did not name specific individuals.
Kuku faces stiff competition from local rivals, most notably 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 restrained Kuku from releasing new episodes of five disputed shows. Bisu said that the lawsuits by Pocket FM were intended to distract investors, noting that this has happened around previous fundraises.
He added that Kuku has a dedicated team that manually reviews all uploaded content for copyright violations. The startup has also developed tools to detect whether creators are uploading copyrighted or third-party content. Some of the new funding will go toward improving these tools and investing in technology that can better identify when a creator is using someone else’s work.
Compared to Pocket FM, Kuku had more downloads but saw significantly lower in-app purchase revenue according to Appfigures data. While India accounts for the majority of Kuku’s downloads and earnings, Pocket FM generates eighty-two percent of its downloads from India but earns ninety-eight percent of its revenue from outside the country. While Kuku saw significant growth in both downloads and consumer spending in 2025, Pocket FM experienced a twenty-one percent year-over-year decline in downloads to thirty-eight million, but a sixty-one percent increase in consumer spending to one hundred million dollars.
Kuku plans to use its latest funding to enhance its AI and data infrastructure, expand its workforce of one hundred and fifty people by hiring new talent in technology and content, and deepen creator partnerships to scale in India and beyond. The startup is already testing its offerings in the Middle East and the United States, with plans to scale in the United States in 2026.