How AI became existential for Pocket FM’s survival, and not just a side project

Pocket FM's breakthrough with artificial intelligence hasn’t been a side project or a buzzword—it has been integral and existential to the company’s evolution.

“I think it (AI) is not a buzzword for us. The reason why we believe we have made AI work for us is it was existential,” said Rohan Nayak, Co-founder and CEO of Pocket FM, during a fireside chat with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma. “It is not something that you could do. If you don’t do it, there is a high probability we would fail if we don’t further innovate on AI, because the speed with which things are moving — the cost of content production, from audio and image creation to video — is going down to zero.”

Nayak was speaking at the 16th edition of YourStory’s flagship event, TechSparks 2025.

“When AI came in 2023, we saw an opportunity — maybe this will solve the problems we’ve been trying to solve,” he said. “From content to marketing, to helping writers write better, to even localisation from one language to another — the toughest decision came in 2024. Do you pivot or not? I told my team we need to pivot 180 degrees to be AI-first.”

Over the past year, the company has launched several AI-powered products and tools to help creators and writers produce content. Its new AI copilot simplifies the entire process of creating audio series — it can generate complete episodes based on a writer’s brief, eliminating the need to hire voice artists or add background music manually. The AI suite allows writers to focus on storytelling while Pocket FM’s tools handle production end-to-end.

“Till date, we have seen over 50,000 AI shows being produced on the platform, and not just that — using AI, our top writers are earning more than Rs 50 lakh annually,” Nayak said.

The pivot to AI has fundamentally changed Pocket FM’s trajectory. The company is now generating free cash flows and has reached an annual revenue run rate of $350 million.

“In January 2025, we were not profitable; we were burning a lot of cash. When the AI initiatives started hitting, we saw that AI had not only accelerated growth — new content driving new user acquisition and retention — but it also had a direct 20% impact on our bottom line. Because of that, we are profitable today and can proudly say that we are generating free cash flows,” Nayak said.

The audio-streaming platform forayed into international markets three years ago and has since gained traction in the US, with over 75% of its revenue now coming from overseas. AI has also enabled Pocket FM to expand into newer markets such as Germany and Latin America.

“I think now I’m seeing more and more Indian entrepreneurs thinking global first,” said Nayak. “There’s a difference in mindset. India is a big market, and you can build products for India, but there are innovations here that can go global. When American entrepreneurs build companies, no one asks, ‘Are you going to launch in other countries?’ Of course they are — it’s not an afterthought.”