Update: Kuku FM raises $21.8 Mn in Series B1 round led by Fundamentum

Update: Kuku FM has raised $21.8 million in Series B1 funding round, led by The Fundamentum Partnership. Along with new investors Fundamentum and Paramark, existing investors KRAFTON, Inc, 3one4 Capital, Vertex, Verlinvest and FounderBank Capital have also participated in this round.

Original story follows:

Audio content platform Kuku FM has kicked off a new round led by Fundamentum, a  venture capital firm co-founded by Infosys’ co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Helion Ventures's co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal.

The board at Kuku FM has passed a special resolution to issue 100 equity and 7,59,401 Series B1 CCPS at issue price of Rs 2,205 per share to raise Rs 167.47 crore or $20 million, the company’s regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show.

The Fundamental Partnership Fund spearheaded the new round with Rs 76 crore while Paramark KB Fund and Krafton INC have pumped in Rs 38.2 crore and Rs 26.7 crore respectively. Vertex Ventures SEA and V Cube Ventures participated with Rs 9.6 crore and Rs 9.1 crore, respectively. Other VCs and individuals such as FBC fund, 3one Capital and Tonmoy Shingal collectively contributed Rs 7.87 crore.

This appears to be an extended Series B round which saw a $19.5 million investment led by South Korean gaming giant Krafton Inc in March this year. Kuku FM has so far raised $25 million (excluding fresh funds) since its inception in 2018.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has raised this round at a post-money valuation of $120 million.

Mumbai-based Kuku FM provides content creation tools to its users enabling them to create, develop and post content. It currently offers content in five languages including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, and Gujarati. The platform is available across genres including fiction and nonfiction audiobooks, self-help education titles, entertainment, news, mythology, and spirituality, among others.

As of March, the podcast platform had over 30,000 creators on the platform with 50% of the overall content being exclusive to the platform. Recently, Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder and CEO of Kuku FM, claimed that the company crossed 1.5 million active paid subscriptions. Earlier, the company said that it’s aiming to hit 10 million active paid users by the end of 2022, and 50 million by 2025.

Founded by Bisu, Vinod Kumar Meena, and Vikas Goyal, KuKu FM competes with Pocket FM, Awaz, Headfone and with Pratilipi and Gaana to some extent.

The new round comes soon after the announcement of Fundamentum’s new fund worth $227 million which would be invested across early growth stage startups. Launched in 2017, Fundamentum has backed several startups including PharmEasy and Spinny, Ayu Health, FarEye, Probo, ShopClues and Azure Power among others.