The radio audio industry in India has undergone a major change with Kuku FM, which is a major platform in the industry, still experiencing rapid growth. The financial statements of Kuku FM at the end of the fiscal year, which ended in March 2025, the firm has made a remarkable growth in the size of its operations, almost tripling the revenue in comparison with the previous year. This is after the company achieved a high performance in the FY24, with the firm recording more than 100% revenue growth therein. The sharper 175% scale growth in FY25 has cost the company dearly, with the platform incurring high advertising and marketing expenses in order to gain a higher market share of the paying subscriber base.
Revenue growth in FY25
The operating revenue of Kuku FM rose to ₹242 crore in FY25, which was a huge increase considering that the same was ₹88 crore in FY24. This trend shows the rising demand of Indian consumers for a variety of audio content in different genres like personal finance, business, self-help, history, religion, entertainment, and fitness.
The platform continues to rely on its pay-walled subscriptions as the only source of revenue, which demonstrates that the model that the company adopts of making people pay in order to listen to premium audio stories is picking up considerable steam. Besides the main business, the company realized ₹16 crore due to other revenue sources, like the interest on deposits and investments, which brought its total income of the fiscal year to ₹258 crore.
The shift between ₹88 crore to ₹242 crore can be seen as one of the most aggressive scaling campaigns in the domestic media and entertainment startup ecosystem. With 100% concentration on a subscription model, Kuku FM is trying to generate a stable and predictable flow of revenue as opposed to platforms that largely depend on the changing ad revenues. This emphasis on high-quality, gated content enables the company to filter a more active user base, but the issue of acquiring such subscribers is thus far the main problem with the business on the verge of its possible public market launch.
Expenditure analysis and prioritizing marketing scale
Although the revenue growth was impressive, it came with a high increase in the total expenditure. The total expenses that the company incurred exceeded expectations in the previous fiscal year, to ₹411 crore in FY25 compared to ₹200 crore in the previous year. Advertising and marketing expenses were the largest contributor to this growth, with almost 70% of the total expenditure.
Kuku FM has been able to sustain its growth rate by 2.8x its marketing expenditures, increasing to ₹285 crore in FY25, as compared to ₹102 crore in FY24. This massive expenditure highlights the fact that digital content acquisition is extremely expensive, as platforms have to engage in a constant battle to get attention from users using various languages and in a variety of formats.
There were also increases in other operational costs, but at a slower rate than in marketing. The expenditure on employee benefits that include salaries and incentives of the company workforce went up by 28% to ₹60 crore. Information technology costs also followed the same trend, with expenses increasing by 28% to ₹27 crore as the platform expanded its infrastructure to allow millions of listeners.
The cost of depreciation had increased to ₹9 crore in the process. These numbers indicate how Kuku FM is investing in human capital and technological infrastructure so that the platform will be sustainable as the number of users increases and the amount of content grows.
The move to focus on scale by spending heavily on advertising has inevitably affected the profitability of the company. According to Kuku FM, the net loss will reach ₹153 crore in FY25, which is 59% higher than the loss of ₹96 crore in FY24. The EBITDA margin of the firm was equal to -65.29%, and Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) was equal to -163.73%.
Although these numbers may indicate the escalation of financial tension, a more thorough analysis of the unit-level results can prove the existence of a silver lining. Kuku FM spent ₹1.70 per rupee to earn every rupee of operating revenue in FY25; a major difference compared with the ₹2.27 spent to earn a rupee of operating revenue in the last fiscal year.
This is an efficiency increase that implies that the brand is starting to gain better conversion rates or increased lifetime value of its current subscribers. The decline in the cost-to-revenue ratio shows that the company is successfully streamlining its marketing funnel.
Although its absolute losses are increasing, the platform’s capacity to earn more revenue per unit of spend is a vital performance indicator among investors. The company has a strong liquidity position with the current assets being ₹268 crore and cash and bank balances being ₹117 crore. This gives the company a wide runway to keep its operations going as it proceeds on its way to a possible IPO.
Conclusion
The performance of Kuku FM in FY25 is typical of a high-growth startup, where the market share is gained by the aggressive utilization of the capital. It has tripled its revenue and drastically enhanced its unit economics, proving that its business model of subscription is scalable in the Indian market. The huge ₹285 crore on marketing points to the legacy issue of expensive acquisitions in the audio streaming world. The main aim of the company as it faces the future is to maintain this trend of revenue growth, but slowly reduce marketing costs in order to stabilize the bottom line.
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