Pocket FM Co-founder and CEO Rohan Nayak has addressed speculation around the shutdown of Pocket TV, clarifying that the microdrama platform was always intended as a beta product and not a standalone business that was being wound down.
In a LinkedIn post, Nayak said recent media reports framing the move as “Pocket FM shuts down Pocket TV” did not accurately reflect the company’s decision. He noted that Pocket TV was built as a beta product, operated for around five months, and was subsequently discontinued after the company gathered insights from the experiment.
Also read: Pocket FM Exits Microdrama Space, Winds Down Pocket TV
Sharing the key learnings from the beta, Nayak said Pocket FM believes the current microdrama business model faces structural challenges, particularly around user retention. According to him, attracting first-time users is not the primary issue; ensuring they return over the long term remains the bigger challenge.
He also questioned the sustainability of the category’s economics, stating that much of the market is currently driven by aggressive customer acquisition spending, dark patterns and auto-renewal mechanisms. Nayak said Pocket FM is not interested in pursuing growth through such tactics, adding that if a business depends on making cancellations intentionally difficult, it reflects a marketing arbitrage model rather than genuine product-market fit.
Nayak contrasted this with Pocket FM’s core business, saying the company has built its growth on user retention rather than high marketing spends. He claimed that more than 50% of Pocket FM’s users remain active after 12 months and that the platform has a higher daily active user (DAU) base than any dedicated microdrama platform despite spending a fraction of the category’s marketing budgets. “Retention is a strategy. Virality is an event—we will take the former every single time,” he wrote.
Addressing suggestions that Pocket TV had failed, Nayak said the beta had achieved its purpose by helping the company learn quickly and identify a more promising opportunity. He added that those learnings have enabled Pocket FM to “crack something very disruptive” in the microdrama space, with further details to be announced later.
Ending the post on a lighter note, Nayak thanked the media for the attention the development received, joking that the company would “schedule a press conference” the next time it shuts down a beta product.
