How Pocket FM is building AI-powered entertainment engine

New Delhi: As demand for always-on, personalised entertainment intensifies, Pocket FM is quietly building a new media empire—one powered not by studios or satellite trucks, but by artificial intelligence. 

The audio entertainment platform, already a category leader in India and scaling fast in the US and Germany, is redefining what it means to be an AI-native content company.

According to a recent BCG report titled "India's AI Leap: BCG Perspective on Emerging Challengers", generative AI is transforming how media and entertainment companies ideate, produce, and market content.

The report analyses how Pocket FM uses AI to propel its growth

At the heart of Pocket FM’s model is its AI-powered Blockbuster Identification Engine, which reduces pilot creation time by up to 90%. This tool evaluates story potential early, allowing the platform to rapidly greenlight promising audio series. Writers also benefit from AI co-writing tools that assist with everything from generating cliffhangers to refining paragraphs in real time, cutting content development timelines in half.

The results speak for themselves. AI-generated series have reached $12 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and now account for 10% of Pocket FM’s revenue and playtime in the US, stated the report. 

To scale storytelling globally, Pocket FM developed Atlas, Copilot, an in-house AI tool that localises stories with cultural nuance and linguistic precision. Whether it’s adapting a hit series for a German audience or localising references for regional markets in India, Atlas enables seamless cross-border storytelling. Its success is evident: Pocket FM’s German-language launches alone achieved $10 million in revenue within six months.

Pocket FM is also turning user-generated content into monetisable assets. Through its AI-enabled UGC platform, aspiring writers can submit scripts and have them turned into narrated audio episodes using synthetic voice tech within a single day. This end-to-end automation allows the platform to produce high-volume content at low cost.

To date, Pocket FM has created over 100,000 hours of content, with AI-driven processes contributing to cost reductions of up to 90% in some areas.

AI also powers the company’s marketing engine. Pocket FM’s algorithms generate and optimise trailers, banners, and promotional posts, cutting production time by 50% and cost by 80%. Campaigns are then A/B tested in real time by AI, delivering 20–30% improvements in performance.

Even storytelling formats are expanding through AI. The company’s in-house tool “BLAZE!” transforms audio stories into comics, doing so 21 times faster than traditional methods.

Pocket FM’s content is distributed via a microtransaction-based subscription model, where users unlock episodes as they go. This format drives high retention and binge consumption—users now spend over two hours daily on the platform, double the engagement of major video services.

Franchises like Saving Nora have become proof points for the scalability of Pocket FM’s AI-first strategy, demonstrating how a machine-assisted content engine can incubate blockbuster IP that transcends geography, format, and language.