Kuku FM Raises $25 Million In Series C Funding The platform plans to leverage the funds to further strengthen the content ecosystem, increase the depth of content in Indian languages and focus on technology
By Teena Jose
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
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Kuku FM has raised $25 million in Series C funding round, co-led by The Fundamentum Partnership and International Finance Corporation (IFC), with participation from Vertex Ventures. The latest round marks Fundamentum's second investment in the vernacular audio content platform. Kuku FM had last raised $21.9 million in Series B1 funding, led by the Fundamentum Partnership in September 2022. Kuku FM will deploy the newly raised funds to further strengthen the content ecosystem, increase the depth of content across Indian languages for Bharat 2.0 audience and focus on technology.
"In our journey towards building a business model focused on Bharat 2.0 segment and creating a sustainable business model with a clear path to profitability, the Fundamentum team's insights and support have been invaluable. We are excited to welcome our new partner International Finance Corporation. We look forward to leveraging IFC's valuable experience and expertise in scaling up Kuku FM's business," said Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder and CEO, Kuku FM.
Founded in 2018 by Lal Chand Bisu, Vikas Goyal and Vinod Kumar Meena, Kuku FM is currently India's audio platform that claims to have more than 2.5 million paid subscribers. It also provides proprietary content creation tools to its users, enabling them to create, develop and post content on the platform.
"We want to leverage cutting edge technology to build India's most intuitive, immersive and transparent content platform here at Kuku FM," said Vikas Goyal.
Commenting on the fundraise, Prateek Jain, Principal, Fundamentum Partnership said, "Kuku FM has created a niche category which caters to the unique and rapidly evolving demands of the new digital natives of India. Moreover, Bisu and team have demonstrated a great understanding in terms of creating a business model with strong focus on unit economics and robust fundamentals. We are excited to be a partner in Kuku FM's journey in building a strong national creator-listener community, with specific focus on supporting BIZ Experiencess."
The home-grown tech venture fund, Fundamentum Partnership, is led by Indian BIZ Experiencess-turned-investors - Nandan Nilekani, Sanjeev Aggarwal, Ashish Kumar, Prateek Jain and Mayank Kachhwaha.
