Pocket FM strengthens leadership team; appoints Shubh Bansal as VP- growth

Pocket FM strengthens leadership team; appoints Shubh Bansal as VP- growth

Ropes in former ShareChat executive Rahul Nag to head its communications.

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Mumbai: Personalised audio streaming service Pocket FM has announced Shubh Bansal's appointment as VP-growth and Rahul Nag as head of communications. Both Bansal and Nag will be reporting to Pocket FM CEO and co-founder Rohan Nayak.

With these appointments, the company aims to intensify its focus to accelerate revenue, speed up growth initiatives, and elevate its brand positioning, it said in a statement.

Bansal will be leading the business growth initiatives across listeners, and new business opportunities. He was a co-founder at Truebil, an auto-tech platform acquired by Spinny where he was responsible for spearheading growth, marketing, and revenue. Before Truebil, he was associated with Housing.com.

Nag will be driving stakeholder engagement through external, social media, and internal communications along with establishing Pocket FM as a culture-first internet organisation. With over a decade and half years of experience in the communications landscape, he has worked with organisations like Flock, Mindtree, and ShareChat. In his earlier roles, he has led the crisis communication for Mindtree during the L&T takeover conflict and contributed to leading the communications for ShareChat and Moj.

Welcoming them onboard, Nayak said, “As we continue our exponential growth curve on the backdrop of a unique storytelling experience, we are bullish on our market leadership in pioneering the ‘audio entertainment’ space. Both Shubh and Rahul are proven leaders in their space and are valuable inclusions into our strategic team. With their strong skillsets and expertise, we hope they will bring the required momentum to our growth, revenue, and brand recall as we continue to build Pocket FM for our community.”

These key appointments come amidst Pocket FM scaling up rapidly, and reflects an increasing trend in audio content consumption on the internet. Over the past few months, the platform has aggressively focused on monetisation and content diversity.

Joining Pocket FM, Shubh Bansal said, “It gives me immense pleasure to work with a company that is pioneering and leading the audio-entertainment category in the OTT space. Our vision is to build category leadership for Pocket FM and lead the OTT landscape through our product innovations and business acumen. I am thankful to the founders for their trust and confidence bestowed upon me, and we will together take Pocket FM to newer milestones.”

Rahul Nag added, “I have always been a great believer in audio-first digital content and it always feels special to have the opportunity to contribute to the leader in the space. Our objective is not just to lead India but become a strong force to reckon with, and we are hopeful of emerging as a stronger brand for our listeners, creators, employees and investors.”

According to the company, it has recently raised $65 million in Series C funding to double down on its strategic priorities of building AI capabilities, multiplying its listeners base with new languages and strengthening its creator community. The company has already hired senior executives to address these priorities and continues to look for talents in the product and tech space aggressively, it stated. Pocket FM has raised $93.6 million till date and is backed by some marquee investors like Lightspeed, Times Group, Tanglin Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, and Naver.