India’s Kuku snags $85M as mobile content wars intensify

Kuku, an Indian storytelling platform backed by Google, has raised $85 million in fresh funding aimed at scaling its audio and video content offerings amid fierce competition in the South Asian country’s mobile-first content market.

Kuku has doubled its previous valuation to nearly $500 million in a Series C round led by Granite Asia (formerly GGV Capital), Kuku founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu confirmed to TechCrunch. The round also saw participation from Vertex Growth Fund, Crafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India and BitCraft.

The latest round also included secondary transactions, in which some of the dogged early investors partially exited by selling their shares to new investors. This includes Google, which was under 2% share and is now exiting entirely, Bisu told TechCrunch.

India, home to more than one billion Internet subscribers and nearly 700 million smartphone users, is experiencing massive growth in digital content consumption driven by ultra-low data costs and seamless micropayments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently made such a comment 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 easier 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 edge in reaching a wider audience with content in local Indian languages.

In 2024, digital media will overtake television for the first time to become the largest segment of India’s media and entertainment sector, contributing 32% of total revenue — ₹802 billion (about $9.13 billion), per EY. Report (PDF) published in March. The report also states that digital media will grow at a CAGR of 11.2% between 2024 and 2027.

This growth potential has prompted dogged players to experiment with new formats including the latest Popular microdrama — Short, continuous video stories designed for mobile viewing. The format has caught on across Indian startups and It has even attracted the attention of global platformsincluding meta Recently launched its own microdrama series Z targets the audience in the country.

Founded in 2018, Kuku was the first to gain traction among Indian content consumers including its audiobook offering via Kuku FM. Since then, it has expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms: Kuku TV, which presents long-form stories as bite-sized episodes in a vertical format, and Kuku FM, which focuses on audio-first shows. The platform offers content in more than eight Indian languages ​​and has crossed 10 million paying subscribers, the startup said, up from two million in the last round in 2023.

Without disclosing actual financial figures, Bisu said the startup has seen a 2X increase in average revenue per user and 10x growth overall since last funding. He noted that about 80% of its customers are from non-metropolitan cities.

About 60% of dog customers are male and 40% female, Bisu said, adding that most customers are between 25 and 35 years of age.

Kuku offers access to its platforms through paid subscription plans starting at ₹199 (about $2) per month, ₹499 (about $6) per quarter, and ₹1,499 (about $17) per year. Bisu says that the quarterly plan is the most popular among users.

Consumers spend an average of 100 minutes per day on the Dog platform, the founder said, adding that more than 90% of the startup’s customers are active month to month.

Kuku gets content through third-party content creators, and currently has about 10,000 creators. Of them, more than 50% are from small towns and non-metro cities, Bisu said. He noted that the startup pays its creators about ₹400 million (about $4.5 million) per month.

The Kuku FM app led downloads and consumer spending among the startup’s portfolio, which includes Kuku TV, Kuku Bhakti (a devotional app based on Hindu mythology) and StoRizz (focusing on bite-sized microdramas), according to data Apfigure shared with TechCrunch.

As of September, Kuku 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, with $2.8 million from Kuku FM and $1.3 million from Kuku TV, AppFigure data shows.

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

Bisu told TechCrunch that, in terms of usage, Kuku TV is bigger than Kuku FM, accounting for more than 60% of the total usage.

The Bengaluru-based startup has developed a GenAI studio to simplify content creation, multilingual translation and use AI tools for on-demand ad generation. The studio includes software from AI companies including OpenAI and ElevenLab, as well as Kukur in-house tools.

“We’re shifting most of the focus to our tools, because now we have a lot of our own data. We train those models with our own data, and then actually the output is much better than the outside tools,” Bisu told TechCrunch.

The startup doesn’t use GenAI to create content autonomously but instead employs it to help creators develop audio and video stories for its platform. The tools help create titles, plots, scripts, dialogues and thumbnails, while the actual audio and video production is done manually, Bisu said.

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

Without naming specific individuals, Bisu said the startup plans to use the new funding to increase its content with celebrities, including film and television personalities.

Nevertheless, Kuku faces stiff competition from local rivals, particularly Pocket FM, which offers similar audio and visual storytelling formats. Pocket FM has filed multiple copyright infringement cases against the dog. Recently Delhi High Court restrained Cuckoo to release new episodes of five controversial shows.

Bisu said Pocket FM’s lawsuits were intended to mislead investors. “Every time, every time we do a fundraiser, they [Pocket FM] Some go to court and they file a case. So this is not the first time,” Bisu told TechCrunch.

He added that Dog has a dedicated team that manually reviews all uploaded content to check for copyright infringement. The startup has also developed tools to detect whether creators are uploading copyrighted or third-party content

“Some money [from this round] This will also go towards improving the tools — we plan to invest in technology that can detect when a creator is using someone else’s work,” Bisu said.

Compared to Pocket FM, Kuku had more downloads but significantly less revenue from in-app purchases, AppFigure data shows. While India accounts for the lion’s share of downloads and revenue, Pocket FM generates 82% of its downloads from India but earns 98% of its revenue from outside the country, according to AppFigure.

Kuku saw significant growth in both downloads and consumer spending in 2025, with Pocket FM down 21% year-over-year to 38 million downloads, but consumer spending growing 61% to $100 million, according to AppFigure data.

That said, Kuku plans to use its latest funding to improve its AI and data infrastructure, expand its workforce of 150 by hiring new talent in technology and content, and deepen creator partnerships and scale in India and beyond. The startup is already testing its offerings in the Middle East and the US, with plans to scale to the US in 2026.