In a dystopian world ravaged by alien war, a boy who has been bullied at school discovers an ancient book left by the parents he never knew. It turns him into a vampire. And that’s only the first 10 minutes of My Vampire System, the most popular audio drama on Pocket FM, with more than 1.5 billion plays since it debuted four years ago. The story continues for another 4,192 plot-packed and cliffhanger-filled episodes. But if you want to listen to all of them, you’d better to get out your wallet.

An India-based audio entertainment company, Pocket makes its money almost entirely through microtransactions, charging users on a per-episode basis after an initial 30 minutes free each day. Theoretically, a user could listen to My Vampire System entirely for free, if they used their full allotment every single day for four years straight—or they could purchase Pocket “coins” and unlock episodes costing anywhere from just a few pennies to more than $3 each, depending on packages, promotions and episode demand. With no subscription or all-access options, some users pay several hundred, perhaps even more than a thousand dollars for the complete story. And they have—Forbes estimates the series has grossed nearly $90 million in total.

This business model—addictive, snackable audio content sold at high unit costs—has powered Pocket and other microdrama companies to exponential growth in recent years. Founded in 2018 by three friends in their mid-twenties in Bengaluru, India, Pocket has raised nearly $200 million across four fundraising rounds from investors, including tech heavy hitters Tencent and Lightspeed. They were members of the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 class of 2022, and reached a valuation of $750 million in 2024 (Forbes estimates the founders retain around 15-20% of the company’s equity).

It was “pretty decent,” Pocket Entertainment cofounder and CEO Rohan Nayak tells Forbes, but the 33-year-old thought the growth was “too slow.” So he came to the same conclusion many microdrama studios have in recent years—content can be made faster and cheaper using AI rather than his network of contract writers and voice actors. “I was really hopeful that maybe if we just bet the house on us building AI creator tools,” Nayak says, “it would help us produce content at unprecedented rate, and that would help grow the business.”

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