Kuku FM bets vernacular India pays for audio: 10M+ paid users, ₹1,400 Cr revenue, IPO

Kuku FM is a Mumbai-based vernacular entertainment platform streaming audiobooks, stories, self-help, finance and courses in 14 Indian languages, monetized through subscriptions and microtransactions; sister app Kuku TV produces short microdrama video series.

That India's vernacular-first mobile users would pay for audio content: Kuku bet on a ₹399/year subscription plus microtransactions instead of an ad-only free tier.

$85M round in October 2025 led by Granite Asia at about a $500M valuation; earlier $25M Series C (2023, Fundamentum + IFC) and $21.9M Series B1 (2022)

Founded in June 2018 by IIT Jodhpur batchmates Lal Chand Bisu, Vinod Kumar Meena and Vikas Goyal, Kuku FM launched in audio at a moment when almost everyone wrote it off: VCs did not believe vernacular India would pay for content, and the assumption was that short video would flatten audio. The founders bet the opposite and built a paid, subscription-first product for Hindi and regional-language listeners.

The model compounded: FY24 total revenue hit ₹104.1 crore (2x from ₹48.8 crore) with over 2.5 million paid users, and FY26 revenue surged nearly seven-fold to more than ₹1,400 crore from about ₹240 crore, close to operational break-even. Paid users grew 4x from about 2 million in early 2024 to 10 million-plus across Kuku FM, Kuku TV and Guru. In October 2025 Granite Asia led an $85 million round at about a $500 million valuation, and Kuku TV — launched in early 2025 — became India's most downloaded app for 30 straight days.

Still running and scaling: in June 2026 Kuku Technologies confidentially filed its DRHP with SEBI for an IPO of ₹2,500–3,500 crore at a valuation of up to ₹15,000 crore (about $1.8 billion), and is expanding into the US.

The founders started from an unmet need — there was no vernacular audio IP — and built a studio instead of copying Western aggregator models.

They priced for the audience they knew: a ₹399/year subscription plus microtransactions matched how value-conscious Tier 2–4 users actually spend.

Sticking with paid audio while the market chased free short video proved durable, with 10M+ paying subscribers and near break-even before the IPO filing.

An in-house AI content studio let Kuku scale production across 14 languages and extend the same IP into video microdramas via Kuku TV.

The skeptics' market became the moat: while investors assumed vernacular India wouldn't pay, Kuku's subscription-plus-microtransaction model reached 10M+ paid users and an IPO filing.

As of September 2026 Kuku Technologies is scaling and IPO-bound: it confidentially filed draft papers with SEBI in June 2026 to raise ₹2,500–3,500 crore at up to ₹15,000 crore valuation, with the listing expected later in the fiscal year. Across Kuku FM, Kuku TV and Guru it reports 10M+ active paying subscribers and 400M+ cumulative downloads, with FY26 revenue of ₹1,400+ crore after near seven-fold growth and close to operational break-even. Kuku TV was India's most downloaded app for 30 consecutive days after its early-2025 launch, and the company plans to expand to the US.