Kuku's Series C prices a vertical-drama bet inside a bigger app

The figure or the record

On 15 October 2025, TechCrunch reported, with details confirmed on the record by founder and chief executive Lal Chand Bisu, that Kuku had closed an $85 million Series C round. The round was led by Granite Asia (formerly GGV Capital) and valued the company at 'more than double its previous valuation,' around $500 million; other named participants were Vertex Growth Fund, Krafton, IFC, Paramark, Tribe Capital India and Bitkraft. The round included a secondary component: Google, an existing investor holding under 2 per cent, sold its full stake to new investors as part of the transaction.

What the documents establish

Kuku's own newsroom lists the TechCrunch report among its official press coverage, which corroborates that the reported figures were the company's own account of the round rather than a third party's estimate reached without company input. Bisu told TechCrunch the platform's paid-subscriber base had grown from 2 million to more than 10 million since its prior round in 2023, and that average revenue per subscriber had roughly doubled over the same period, though he did not disclose the underlying dollar figures. The deal matters for this site specifically because Krafton — already recorded here as an investor in Vigloo through Spoon Labs — appears again as a participant, this time in a round for a company whose Kuku TV product presents 'long-form stories as bite-sized episodes in a vertical format,' distinct from its audio-led Kuku FM product.

Scope and caveats

Kuku is not a vertical-drama-only company: its FM product remains prominent, and the coverage frames the round as an 'audio and video' raise rather than one dedicated to short-form drama, so the $85 million cannot be read as a vertical-drama-specific investment figure. No term sheet, valuation methodology, or investor allocation was made public beyond the named participants and the headline number; the 'more than double' valuation language is imprecise by design, and the prior-round baseline valuation is not stated anywhere in the available reporting. This is reported, on-the-record company confirmation rather than a company press release or a regulatory filing, since India's private-company funding disclosures do not require public release of a term sheet.

What to watch

Editorially, the figure to watch is whether Kuku ever separates Kuku TV's vertical-format revenue and subscriber numbers from Kuku FM's, which would let this headline figure be split into its short-form and audio components.

• Does a funding round described as 'audio and video' allow a reader to isolate the vertical-drama share of the business?
• When a company confirms figures to a reporter rather than filing them, does a second outlet or the company's own site corroborate the same numbers?
• Does an investor's participation in one vertical-drama deal predict a pattern across others, or is a single overlap incidental?

An $85 million Series C is a real, sourced number, but it prices a multi-format storytelling company, not a vertical-drama business alone; the two should not be conflated when the company's own reporting does not conflate them.