Kuku FMThe Story
Kuku Technologies, the parent of Kuku FM, reported revenue from operations of ₹1,484.2 crore in FY26, up from ₹241.5 crore a year earlier, alongside marketing and advertising spending of ₹1,105 crore.
The figures come from financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies. Subscriptions accounted for ₹1,475.4 crore, more than 99 per cent of operating revenue. A pay-per-piece model, where users buy coins to unlock content, contributed ₹6.86 crore and advertising ₹1.9 crore. Non-operating income of ₹26.2 crore, largely bank interest, took total income to ₹1,510.4 crore.
Profit before tax was ₹88.6 crore. Net profit of ₹182.7 crore includes a deferred tax benefit of ₹98.1 crore, against a loss of ₹152.6 crore in FY25. EBITDA was ₹82.9 crore at a margin of 5.6 per cent, reversing an EBITDA loss of ₹159.8 crore.
Marketing was the largest cost line, nearly four times the ₹284.8 crore spent in FY25. Employee benefit expenses rose 24 per cent to ₹74.1 crore, including ₹18.5 crore of ESOP cost. IT expenses more than doubled to ₹56.7 crore, operational costs rose to ₹96.25 crore from ₹8.65 crore, and payment gateway charges reached ₹43.2 crore. Total expenditure rose 3.5 times to ₹1,421.7 crore.
Cash and bank balances rose 2.5 times to ₹293 crore, with current assets at ₹746 crore.
The growth came from scaling Kuku TV, the microdrama platform launched in 2024, which now produces more than 150 originals a month. Ahead of a proposed ₹3,500 crore IPO, Kuku is building a 1,000-member AI-led production unit and says 60 to 70 per cent of its content already uses AI tools at some stage. It spends over ₹200 crore a year on content and works with around 50,000 creators.
Why It Matters
Three weeks ago this column read Kuku's hiring plan as evidence that AI was expanding employment rather than contracting it, because lowering the cost per attempt in a hit-driven format raises the optimal number of attempts. The filed accounts complicate that.
Revenue grew more than sixfold. Marketing grew nearly fourfold, to ₹1,105 crore, which is about 74 per cent of revenue and 78 per cent of total costs. The growth was bought, and the receipt is itemised.
That does not make the AI argument wrong, but it relocates it. Producing content cheaply is not the constraint Kuku is spending against. Acquiring subscribers is. A company that can make 150 microdramas a month still has to pay for every viewer who arrives to watch them, and short-form content in India is distributed through the same advertising auctions as everything else.
The profit figure needs similar care. Profit before tax of ₹88.6 crore on ₹1,484 crore of revenue is a margin near 6 per cent. The headline net profit of ₹182.7 crore is larger than the pre-tax figure because of a ₹98.1 crore deferred tax benefit, which is an accounting entry rather than cash earned. The EBITDA margin of 5.6 per cent is the honest measure of how much this business keeps.
Turning a ₹159.8 crore EBITDA loss into an ₹82.9 crore profit in one year is a real achievement. It was achieved by spending more, not less.
The Strategic Read
The content economics are the part that still favours the company, and they sit oddly beside the marketing line.
Kuku spends over ₹200 crore a year on content and works with roughly 50,000 creators to produce more than 150 microdramas a month. Against ₹1,484 crore of revenue, that is a production cost of under 14 per cent. Compare it with marketing at 74 per cent and the shape of the business becomes clear: making the content is cheap, and persuading people to watch it is not.
That is the opposite of a traditional media company, where production is the dominant cost and distribution comes through channels that already have audiences. It is also why the AI push makes sense on its own terms while addressing the smaller problem. Automating writing, dubbing and localisation attacks a ₹200 crore line. The ₹1,105 crore line is untouched by it.
The subscription concentration raises the stakes further. More than 99 per cent of revenue is subscriptions, with advertising at ₹1.9 crore, essentially nothing. A subscription business with negligible advertising revenue has no second way to monetise an audience it has paid to acquire. Every rupee of return has to come from the customer continuing to pay.
Which makes retention the number that matters and the one not disclosed. Kuku's own framing acknowledges low switching costs in short-form content, and the surge in revenue tells us nothing about whether subscribers from early FY26 were still paying by March.
The ₹3,500 crore IPO will have to answer that. A prospectus will contain cohort data, and cohort data is where a ₹1,105 crore marketing bill either justifies itself or does not.
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