Audio streaming platform KukuFM has raised $21.8 million in a Series B1 funding round led by Nandan Nilekani-backed The Fundamentum Partnership.
The round also saw participation from Paramark, KRAFTON Inc, 3one4 Capital, Vertex, Verlinvest, and FounderBank Capital. The funding announcement comes five months after it raised $19.5 million from KRAFTON, with participation from Google, Verlinvest, and other investors.
The startup said it would utilize the raised capital to expand its catalogue, strengthen its content creation ecosystem, and offer more language choices on its platform.
KuKuFM, founded by Lal Chand Bisu, Vikas Goyal and Vinod Kumar Meena in 2018, aims to achieve over 10 million paying customers by the end of next year. The platform provides audio content such as book summaries, courses, audiobooks, stories, and podcasts across seven languages—Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, Telugu, and Bengali.
“We have seen rapidly growing interested for content in regional languages in Tier II and III cities, semi-urban and rural segments. We aim to continue building a strong and diverse creator network that caters to this segment of the Bharat audience,” said Lal Chand Bisu.
Speaking on the investment, Prateek Jain, Principal at Fundamentum Partnership, said, “The India-digitisation story has opened up opportunities across sectors. The content ecosystem has particularly benefited from rapid growth in internet users. In its 4-year journey, Kuku FM has built a business with robust fundamentals, a strong monetisation model, and a national creator-listener community.”
Source @Indianstartupnews
