Pocket TV shutdown a planned beta exit, not a setback: Rohan Nayak

In a LinkedIn post, Nayak, Co-founder & CEO of Pocket FM, questions whether the micro-drama model truly works

by e4m Staff
Published: Jun 26, 2026 4:20 PM | 2 min read

Pocket FM's Co-founder & CEO Rohan Nayak clarified that the closure of its short-form video platform Pocket TV was a planned end to a five-month beta experiment, not a strategic retreat from the micro-drama market.
Nayak criticized media reports for misrepresenting the situation, stating that the shutdown was part of a learning process rather than a failure.
He emphasized that the main challenge in the micro-drama space is long-term user retention, rather than initial user acquisition, and expressed concerns about the sustainability of current business models reliant on aggressive marketing tactics.
Nayak highlighted Pocket FM's success in retaining over 50% of its users after 12 months, asserting that the company prioritizes user satisfaction and retention over large marketing budgets.

A day after media reported that Pocket FM had shut down its short-form video platform Pocket TV, Rohan Nayak, Co-founder & CEO, has clarified that the move was simply the planned closure of a five-month beta experiment rather than a strategic retreat from the micro-drama space.

Posting a long note on LinkedIn, Nayak said the media reports were “a terrible representation of what actually happened.

“Yesterday, Pocket FM was everywhere in the media. Most headlines screamed, "Pocket FM shuts down Pocket TV." It's a great headline. It's also a terrible representation of what actually happened.

If we had known shutting down a beta product would get this much attention, we would definitely have put out a press release back then. We built Pocket TV as a beta, we ran it for around five months, learned a ton, and then shut it down.

Since everyone's talking about it now, here is what we actually learned.

We don't think the current micro drama model works: The hardest part wasn't getting people to try the product, it was getting them to come back. User acquisition isn't the challenge in micro drama today, long-term retention is.

The economics aren't quite what they are made out to be: Much of the category today is being supported by aggressive user acquisition budgets, dark patterns and auto-renewal mechanics, that's not a game we are interested in playing. If your business only works because cancelling is intentionally difficult, you don't have product-market fit, you are a marketing arbitrage platform.

Great retention beats giant marketing budgets: At Pocket FM, we have built our business on user love. More than 50% of our users are still with us after 12 months. We have a higher DAU than any dedicated micro drama platform, despite spending a fraction of what the category spends on marketing and user acquisition and that's the kind of business we want to keep building. Retention is a strategy. Virality is an event - we will take the former every single time.

Did Pocket TV fail? Not at all, it did exactly what a beta is supposed to do, it helped us learn quickly, and uncover something much more interesting.

In fact, those learnings have helped us crack something very disruptive in the micro drama space. More on that soon."