From failing to find market-fit to reaching a billion ears

Pocket FM Unfiltered Part 1: Nishanth KS, Cofounder & COO

We just completed five years of building Pocket FM. Yet, it feels like yesterday.

Truly, time flies when you are with the right set of people. And, it is not only the founders of Pocket FM — Rohan, Prateek and I, but the entire team from the early days that stayed together always and grew with the company.

Today, as we take a moment to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Pocket FM, I would like to take the opportunity to personally thank each one in the entire Pocket FM team that stayed together during both the times of uncertainty and moments of joy.

Without each of you, we would have never been able to reach where we are today. With all your genuine efforts and relentless work, Pocket FM is now a global company that billions of people tune in to from several parts of the world.

We know, the past five years haven’t been easy for any of us. Every member who has been there with Pocket FM since early days knows how we struggled in the first year and a half, how we constantly experimented with bold ideas and adopted quick pivots until we found the right market fit that has built the Pocket FM of today.

It was just about a year after start-up when we realised that our initial hypothesis was wrong. Building a non-music audio entertainment platform on the back of user generated content (UGC), based on which we got our initial investments, simply failed in the real market. That was the first time we had hit the walls.

Well, it wasn’t something unique that happened to Pocket FM. Finding market-fit is the most difficult thing and almost every start-up across the world has failed to find that with the initial idea. Thus, they pivot until they find the right market-fit.

Frankly, Rohan, Prateek and I knew this very well. We had worked with multiple start-ups before we teamed up to build Pocket FM. Our first pivot was switching to podcasts. Our choice was based on a couple of reasons. First, podcast was a tried-and-tested model that has been somewhat successful in the developed market. And, second, it was starting to gain traction in India’s non-music audio market.

But, we probably rushed into podcasts without thinking it through. Podcasts, too, did not work out — at least for Pocket FM.

What followed was a series of things that we weren’t fully prepared for. As our two biggest ideas failed to kick off, we failed to generate much interest from investors for fresh funding, and our runway was getting shorter every day. We were standing at a make-or-break point.

Thankfully, destiny had its own plans. Thanks to the closely-knit team that stood together at a time when people usually ‘give up’, we turned things around over the next six months.

We decided to bet on serialised audio content or audio series — a category we eventually redefined — which was, till then, considered unproven. In reality, it was probably a forgotten mode that was popular during the golden era of good-old radio much before cable television took over the majority of entertainment.

And then, came our first well-crafted audio series Kitni Mohabbatein which gave birth to the Pocket FM that people know today. Soon, we got our first blockbuster — Ye Rishta Kaise Hai.

Today when I look back in retrospect, it was the culture of Pocket FM that changed everything that time. Our inherent culture of ‘freedom to teams’ that leads to “bold experiments” is the biggest strength of Pocket FM. The independence to make decisions is what gives every team the courage to take “big and bold bets”, celebrate failures and learn from them to experiment on their next hypothesis.

Overall we are happy with what we have achieved, humbled and fortunate to have one of the best teams and the culture that managed to build around fundamental principles of creativity and innovation that empowers data-centric independent decision making, helps us stay agile, ensures happiness and work towards profitability.

While writing this blogpost, I was trying to think if I ever had a “personal let-go moment” while building Pocket FM. Truth to be told, I never had any, thanks to the team every moment of dilemma and possible give-up moment just evaporated even before I could realise their existence. And, that made every ride enjoyable even at our toughest times.

That’s also the reason we are able to relentlessly work towards redefining non-music audio entertainment by building audio series as a mainstream category, globally.

Five years from now, when Pocket FM celebrates its 10th anniversary, we should be able to proudly say that “Pocket FM is the world’s largest audio entertainment company” being the “platform of choice” for best writers, voice-over artists and creative talents, besides the billions of listeners across the globe enjoying our style of storytelling. Yes, that’s the goal of team Pocket FM.

Happy anniversary folks!

Pocket FM Unfiltered is a Founders Special Series, curated in celebration of our 5th Anniversary! This blog marks the inception of our three-part series.