Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Anupama Chopra sits down with Pocket FM co-founder Prateek Dixit and writer Ajit Kumar for a conversation about the platform his co-founder Rohan Nayak has called the Netflix of audio, and about what happens when the gatekeepers of storytelling are removed entirely. Prateek explains how Pocket FM grew into a platform with over 250 million registered users and more than 300,000 creators distributing content across 15 languages, and why every new show on it begins at zero regardless of who wrote it. He breaks down the algorithm that tests a story with a hundred listeners before propagating it to millions, the reason India alone now has 200,000 writers on the platform, and why the biggest IPs on Pocket FM run for hundreds of hours rather than ending at thirty. He also admits to writing two episodes a day himself, three months into his own first attempt.
Prateek lays out where he believes entertainment is headed, arguing that artificial intelligence can take on the craft of writing but never the art of it, and that collapsing production costs will soon make one-person studios and independent writers earning millions of dollars an ordinary part of the business. He makes the case for hyperpersonalisation, pointing to genres like science fiction and space opera, and to the eighty-plus languages with more than ten million speakers, that traditional studios ignore because the return never justifies the risk. Ajit Kumar joins the conversation to talk about Brahmyodha: The Destroyer, the show that became a blockbuster on his twenty-sixth attempt after twenty-five that did not land, and Prateek closes on the single quality he has found common to every successful writer he has watched: sheer perseverance.
#PocketFM #PrateekDixit #AjitKumar
00:00 Introduction
04:06 How writers earn on Pocket FM
08:45 Who counts as a creator now
11:55 Why every show starts at zero
16:23 Can AI replace a writer
21:24 The hyperpersonalisation era ahead
26:53 Ajit Kumar joins the conversation
Anupama Chopra sits down with Pocket FM co-founder Prateek Dixit and writer Ajit Kumar for a conversation about the platform his co-founder Rohan Nayak has called the Netflix of audio, and about what happens when the gatekeepers of storytelling are removed entirely. Prateek explains how Pocket FM grew into a platform with over 250 million registered users and more than 300,000 creators distributing content across 15 languages, and why every new show on it begins at zero regardless of who wrote it. He breaks down the algorithm that tests a story with a hundred listeners before propagating it to millions, the reason India alone now has 200,000 writers on the platform, and why the biggest IPs on Pocket FM run for hundreds of hours rather than ending at thirty. He also admits to writing two episodes a day himself, three months into his own first attempt.
Prateek lays out where he believes entertainment is headed, arguing that artificial intelligence can take on the craft of writing but never the art of it, and that collapsing production costs will soon make one-person studios and independent writers earning millions of dollars an ordinary part of the business. He makes the case for hyperpersonalisation, pointing to genres like science fiction and space opera, and to the eighty-plus languages with more than ten million speakers, that traditional studios ignore because the return never justifies the risk. Ajit Kumar joins the conversation to talk about Brahmyodha: The Destroyer, the show that became a blockbuster on his twenty-sixth attempt after twenty-five that did not land, and Prateek closes on the single quality he has found common to every successful writer he has watched: sheer perseverance.
#PocketFM #PrateekDixit #AjitKumar
00:00 Introduction
04:06 How writers earn on Pocket FM
08:45 Who counts as a creator now
11:55 Why every show starts at zero
16:23 Can AI replace a writer
21:24 The hyperpersonalisation era ahead
26:53 Ajit Kumar joins the conversation
