PocketFm | Pocket Novel

Pocket Novel: Growth Strategy | पॉकेट नॉवेल: ग्रोथ स्ट्रैटेगी | Author - Abhinav Jain

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Abhinav Jain, Director of New Initiatives at PocketFM
GrowthX Member since 2022

Diving deeper into understanding how Pocket Novel works

Chapters (10)

📘 Ch 1: About Pocket FM/Novel

About PocketFM and Pocket Novel

• PocketFM is an app built primarily for ‘Bharat’ audience focussing on Audiobooks, Podcasts and eBooks. It offers a diversified portfolio of personalised content across multiple vernacular languages - including English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Marathi. The company started in 2018 and currently boasts of 80 Mn users who listen to 100+ minutes of content every day (Source)
• On the company’s financials, Pocket FM is currently in Series C, and has raised a total funding of $94.3M (with the latest funding round of $65M raised in Mar 2022) (source). The company achieved an ARR of $25M as of Oct’22, and is planning to scale up to $100M ARR in 2023, with an expansion into US market (Source).
• PocketFM focusses primarily on long-form serialised content for engagement and repeat viewing of personalised content of interest for the user. The company is currently monetising via:
• • Ad Revenue: Pocket FM's solution enables brands to engage with the listener community with a customised approach. They have launched ads after a succesful pilot with 100+ brands (Source). The current CPMs for Pocket FM are: Audio Ad of 10-20 sec (CPM: INR 180), Video Ad of 10-30 sec (CPM: INR 220), Rectangular Banner ad (CPM: INR 160), and App Install objective ad (CPA: INR 60 per install).(Source: The Media Ant)
  • Freemium with Micro-transaction based revenue for unlocking
  • • After listening to around 60 minutes of free content, some premium content is locked and only available on purchase more coins (platform currency)
    • For users who want a sunscription model, they have a monthly rolling coins (250 coins added per month) for a monthly subscription model
    • The same model exists for Pocket Novel. Each chapter has variable number of coins required to be spent to unlock it.
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• Pocket FM has a 4.5-star rating on Google Play Store with 15.5L ratings given, whereas Pocket Novel Reader has a 3.5 star with only 3.8k ratings. On the Apple App store, Pocket FM has a 4.4-star with 7.8k ratings, whereas Pocket Novels has a 3.7-star with just 26 ratings. This is also in alignment with their primary focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 audience, where Android usage is significantly higher (95:5 ratio).
• Pocket Novel is available both as an in-app tab under PocketFM and as a separate app. The assumption is that the company is moving to a specific experience for readers which will be different from a listener experience.
• Pocket Novel is unique in its proposition of providing a kindle-like reading experience for the users, but in their regional languages and with aspiring and passionate writers (not necessarily bestselling authors)

Core Value Prop

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Core Value Proposition

User Goals

For Writers

For Readers

📘 Ch 2: Market Research

Market Sizing

​Assumption: For the calculation of TAM,SAM, SOM I am restricting to the India markets as the expansion to US has only started recently and for Pocket Novel, it’ll make more sense to go deeper into the Indian market only.

• TAM: 550 MnEvery Indian consumer with internet connection on his or her smartphoneSource: Internet user demographics
• SAM: 368 MnAll the users in TAM who fall in the serviceable market as defined by the age group of our personas (15-65).This is approx 67% of TAM (Source
• SOM: 121 Mn, $3.78 BnHigh, Medium and some % of low income groups around this age bracket, with an interest in long form content

  Income	Age (18-24)	Age (25-34)	Age (35-44)	Age (45-54)	Age (55-65)
  Total Distr	25.5%	41.5%	27%	4.5%	1.5%
  High Income	11%	17%	11%	2%	1%
  Medium Income	8%	13%	9%	1%	0%
  Low Income	7%	11%	7%	1%	0%

• Assume SOM as High and Medium Income households, and 30% of low income households. That is 82% of SAM. Assume interest in stories and long form content as 40% of this base. Total is approx 33% of SOMFor revenue calculations, assume ARPU per user (as INR 10,000 per year). And percentage conversion (possible to monetisation) as 25%Therefore, SOM ($) = 121Mn * 25% * $125 = $3.78 Bn
  

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Competitor Analysis

Since our primary focus is Indian market hence we have gone to the depth to understand who are the competitors in India what features do they offer. This will help us understand how PocketFM can create a differentiation among their peers.

📘 Ch 3: Ideal Customer Profile

The potential ICPs are:

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I have shortlisted 1 ICP from each persona (Write and Reader). I have taken an aspirational writer persona and a housewife (who has time at home and wants to read).

ICP Details:

User Persona:

Based on these ICPs, the user personas are:

• Harsh Kumar (Aspiring Writer)
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• Harsh is a 23 year old male living in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh. He is currently working as a freelance content writer with various companies including content and sports Industry, and has also worked for 1 year as a full time writer in a company in Bhopal. Harsh developed an interest in writing (fiction) during his college days, and started writing since then. He is currently staying with his parents. He enjoys interacting with other writers and is very enthusiastic about promoting literature amongst the youth in India.Harsh has had an uncertain career till now, with freelancing being sporadic in nature. His biggest challenge is convincing his parents that he is skilled and writing can provide the desired finances needed, and he doesn’t need to go and do a job in an area where he is not interested in. Harsh is super active on social media and tries to promote his writing via the Social media, and keeps working on building his follower base. He is also learning digital marketing on the side.
• Harsh’s Goals
• 1. Financial Goals (Primary) - Earn money as a writer
  2. Functional Goals - Get a proper tool to write content, Get access to good editors, Get analytics on user behaviour on his content
  3. Personal Goals - Prove to parents that writing can provide financial support, become better at his craft
  4. Social Goals - Reach wider audience, become famous
• Sutapa Roy (Reader: Housewife)
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• Sutapa is a 32 year old female living in Kolkata. She is originally from Malda and got married 2 years back to Sudeepto (who is working in a bank) and has a 9 to 5 job. Sutapa is a housewife and takes care of the house while Sudeepto is not there.Sutapa loves to cook, and her favorite new hobby is baking. She is a very social person and also keeps gifting her new bakes to her neighbors and friends. She goes everyday to the Subzimandi to pick and choose and bargain for the best vegetables, and likes making new dishes for her husband. Sutapa loves to watch Saas-Bahu serials on TV, and enjoys gossiping about it with her neighbors/friends.Sutapa was always an avid reader since she was a kid, and loves fiction novels/comics, specially in Bengali language. She feels that Bengali literature is dying and finds it tough to find interesting novels/content to read.
• Sutapa’s Goals
• 1. Personal Goals (Primary) - Read interesting Bengali fiction, Read/listen to self-help and gain knowledge
  2. Social Goals - Gossip about latest story with neighbours/friends, share interesting content on social media
  3. Functional Goals - Get access to wide library of content, have a good reading experience

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📘 Ch 4: Acquisition (Referral)

Channel Prioritisation

While Organic, Paid Ads, and Influencer Marketing is already being done by PocketFM/Pocket Novel, I can see a major gap in the quality of Referral design, and can see a potential improvement there. Since, it is linked with the platform currency (Coins), it helps incentivise the user to earn coins and use that for reading more/spending more time on the app. Also, it helps add an element of social and thereby an ability to acquire more users (who already have their friends on the app).

Referral Design

• Bragworthiness - Get the best novels in your language, personalised for you. Access it from your mobile. Read anytime, anywhere
• Social effort - not much. The customer can easily share a novel with their friends via Whatsapp/Social media. It’s also relatively easier to onboard on the app.
• Social Risk - Minimal. Some people want an image of being knowledgeable and reading a lot. This works in their favour
• Platform Currency - Coins - helps read more.
• Who to ask for referral / Happy flow
• • A person who has experienced the core value prop of the app (assume: active reading for 120 minutes within 4 days of App install and signup).
  • A person who liked a particular content, and has left a 4 or 5 star rating on a particular novel.

Mockups (with detailed explanation)

Current Flow (only available in PocketFM, not in Pocket Novel) - to be introduced

GTM 1: Sitting at the end of scroll on ‘My Store’. GTM 1: No nudge on top of screen

GTM 2: Sitting on top left of screen (that’s Half screen pop-up - should be an immersive full screen experience

where the user doesn’t go to explore) -

easy to miss

This is fine. Can be done better.

Proposed flow:

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Current GTMs remain same with minor changes

• GTM 1 (Add a nudge on top to refer a friend and earn coins)
• GTM 2 (give more focus on Home for referring - experiment with shifting this to extreme right, and language to extreme left)
• For Happy Flow users, either add a nudge post reviews (refer a friend), or add a sticky floating icon on bottom right (similar to Explore in ‘Pocket Novel’), for 3-5 days after happy flow

Also, 200 coins is a little less - approx INR 40. We should increase to 350 coins for now. Keeping the coin value same for now.

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Page Design:

• 3 stages: Invited, Installed, First Purchasee done
• Add Pending Coins (those who have installed, but not purchased), and total coins earned via referral
• Pending page highlighted separately (2nd image)
• Add personalisation (1st 4 characters of name) - in referral code
• Add a north star goal - add 100 friends

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📘 Ch 5: Onboarding Deep-Dive

Onboarding improvement

Pocket Novel (Screenshots attached with each row - if you open the title)

📘 Ch 6: Engagement & Retention

Natural Frequency by Usage

📖 Natural frequency of Pocket Novel based on Causal, Core & Power users

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Define the Engagement framework

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While for writers, frequency of engagement is primary lever (already included in their monetization/incentive module), depth of engagement becomes the secondary lever for engagement.

For readers, depth of engagement (time spent, total amount of coins) becomes the primary lever for engagement, while breadth becomes secondary.

Product Hook: Earn Coins

While we can potentially look at a lot of solutions to add depth, I want to focus on one particular solution here — Earn Coins. While a user can buy coins (via microtransactions, leading to monetization), for users who prefer spending time over money, we can add a layer where they can spend more time doing certain activities and earn coins (to be used for unlocking chapters). This helps build habits for the customer.

(Important: The caveat is that this might lead to cannibalization of customers who were ready to spend money to buy coins, this has to be carefully understood with a clear demarcation between those who will buy coins vs those who will do activities to earn more coins - can also lead to a separate layer of monetization (think: Flipkart Supercoins).

Primary Goal: Increase depth of engagement (Convert casual to core, and core to power users)

Success Criteria: Lift in % of power users, Lift in % of Core Users (shift from Casual), Increase in time spent on the app, Increase in the total amount of coins transacted from a user’s wallet

Ways to Redeem Coins: Unlock chapters (for now, more value can be added later)

Ways to Earn Coins:

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Earn Coins (Mockup)

Shareable badges: Gamification

This helps with engagement and content loops.

📘 Ch 7: App Hygiene (List of Improvements)

Suggestions List

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App Hygiene

🔒 Ch 8: Acquisition (via other channels)

Download app to Read Now

🔒 Ch 9: Monetisation Deep-Dive

Download app to Read Now

🔒 Ch 10: Experiment Design

Download app to Read Now

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