Photo Credit: ConvertKit
About 10 months after unveiling a roughly $78 million Series B funding round, audiobook and podcast platform Podimo has announced a €58.6 million (currently $58.99 million) raise and claimed that it managed to increase “the amount of paying members 5x year on year.”
Three-year-old Podimo (pronounced “POD-ee-mo,” the Copenhagen-based company’s website makes clear) detailed its latest multimillion-dollar raise and its seemingly considerable growth this morning.
According to the corresponding release, existing backers 83North and Highland Europe (both of which are headquartered in London) led the €58.6 million round with Tel Aviv’s Saban Ventures. Additionally, the raise drew support from Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker (“Christian Augustinus Industries”), Reddit investor Heartcore, and former Sonos stakeholder Headline.
Execs at Podimo – which is currently available in Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain as well as “across Latin America” – disclosed their plans to put the sizable tranche “towards market expansion, content, and enhanced investments in tech and product.” (Podimo arrived in the Netherlands in April, after acquiring a production company called Dag en Nacht, and debuted in Finland last month – promptly securing the uppermost ranking on the nations’ respective App Store charts.)
And on this front, Podimo higher-ups also took the opportunity to tout their business’s “dedicated local-first approach,” which centers on “investing in local content from today’s most important voices.”
This approach, in coordination with the service’s seemingly extensive operations in the mentioned countries, is especially noteworthy because Podimo founder and CEO Morten Strunge relayed that his company is already profitable in Denmark.
“Our international expansion is progressing beyond expectations, and we continue to see our growth and content strategy scale efficiently. This funding round sends a clear message that our model is working. As we continue to focus on growing our existing markets and opening new ones, we are also building on our extensive catalog of content,” stated the Winefamly subscription service co-founder Strunge.
“With the current market conditions it’s also important to demonstrate financial sustainability, which is why we are pleased to see our first market turn profitable just three years after the launch of Podimo, with multiple markets on a similar trajectory,” concluded the Podimo head, whose platform is said to have “doubled its employees since 2021.”
Needless to say, Stockholm-based Spotify has invested heavily in podcasting, and particularly because the streaming giant is preparing to roll out audiobooks “very soon,” it’ll be worth following the competition in spoken-word entertainment moving forward.
Notwithstanding the billions that it’s dropped on exclusive programs and podcast companies, Spotify remains 12 to 24 months away from turning a profit in the space, according to CFO Paul Vogel. Meanwhile, well-entrenched players including Apple and SiriusXM are continuing to make high-profile podcasting moves of their own, and evidence suggests that YouTube could be positioned to expand its presence in the sphere.