Podcast platform Kuku FM has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Chinese venture capital fund Shunwei Capital and early-stage domestic investors India Quotient and 3one4 Capital.
The fresh capital will help the company expand its content library, multiple media reports said, citing co-founder and CEO Lal Chand Bisu.
Kuku FM was founded by Bisu, Vinod Kumar Meena, and Vikas Goyal last year. The platform's content themes range from education, entertainment, news, mythology and spirituality to stories, poems and even jingles. It has content in Hindi and is actively bringing on board creators from 23 major languages, according to its website.
Bisu, a graduate of IIT Jodhpur, said the idea for Kuku FM was rooted in the founders’ background of living in small towns where many people listened to radio. A lack of audio content and the absence of a platform to listen also triggered the birth of the startup.
"We also started noticing that everyone around us was looking for ways to reduce screen time and always had earphones on. All these observations, coupled with the steep rise in internet penetration, made it the right time to enter the audio market," Bisu explained.
There has been growing investor interest in the audio segment in recent months. In August, audio streaming platform Dose FM raised an undisclosed amount of money in its seed funding round from a clutch of investors including AngelList India partner Utsav Somani and Mobile Premier League executive Abhishek Madhavan.
Also in August, VCCircle exclusively reported that venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners invested in vernacular social audio platform Pocket FM Pvt. Ltd.
In July, Bengaluru-based Headfone secured $750,000 (around Rs 5.15 crore) in a seed funding round led by Fosun RZ Capital, the venture capital arm of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International.
