Audio content platform Kuku FM, operated by Mebigo Labs Pvt Ltd, on Wednesday said it has raised $25 million (around Rs 208 crore) in a Series C funding round co-led by its existing investor The Fundamentum Partnership and the World Bank Group's private sector investment arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Vertex Ventures, another existing backer of Kuku FM, also doubled down on its investments with the latest round.
VCCircle, in May, had exclusively reported that Kuku FM is in the process of raising a new funding round likely to be led by IFC.
The startup plans to use the funds to further strengthen its content ecosystem and increase depth of its content across Indian languages and focus on technology.
Prior to this, Kuku FM raised $21.9 million in Series B funding round led by the Nandan Nilekani-cofounded Fundamentum Partnership in September 2022. In March last year, Kuku FM had also bagged $19.5 million in a funding round led by Krafton.
The company also counts Google, Paramark, 3one4 Capital, V Cube Ventures, India Quotient and FounderBank Capital as its investors.
Kuku FM, founded in 2018 by Lal Chand Bisu, Vikas Goyal, and Vinod Kumar Meena, is one of the largest audio-listening platforms in India. The platform claims that it has more than 2.5 million dedicated paid subscribers.
It also provides content creation tools to its users. These tools help them to create, develop and post content on the platform. Meanwhile, it has expanded its language offerings to include content in seven Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
“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,” said Prateek Jain, principal, Fundamentum Partnership.