Pocket FM hires former Meta scientist Vasu Sharma as head of AI to advance audio storytelling

Pocket FM taps former Meta scientist Vasu Sharma as head of AI

Pocket FM has appointed Vasu Sharma, a former scientist at Meta's Facebook AI Research (FAIR), as its head of artificial intelligence (AI). Sharma, who will report to cofounder Prateek Dixit, will lead AI research and innovation across narrative generation, production intelligence and large-scale localisation. Bengaluru-based audio streaming platform Pocket FM has appointed Vasu Sharma, a former scientist at Meta's Facebook AI Research (FAIR), as its head of artificial intelligence (AI). Sharma, who will report to cofounder Prateek Dixit, will lead AI research and innovation across narrative generation, production intelligence and large-scale localisation. His prior work at FAIR spanned multimodal and large language model (LLM) programmes such as Llama, Chameleon, MaVIL, and audio-video models. With over 90 research papers cited more than 10,000 times at leading conferences including NeurIPS, CVPR and ACL, Sharma brings deep expertise in long-context reasoning and narrative intelligence. "Existing AI models can generate text," Sharma told ET, "but they don't really grasp story structure or dramatic flow -- the things that make content engaging. My role focuses on developing AI models with the most essential components that genuinely impact creators." He emphasised the need to maintain content quality while ensuring creators remain in control. "AI should enhance their workflows, not replace them," he said. As part of his mandate, Sharma will focus on strengthening proprietary tools such as Pocket FM's AI CoPilot and Pocket LLMs, which support story ideation, drafting, editing, emotional toning and multi-language adaptation. "My role involves accommodating specific use cases and contributing through research," Sharma said. He currently leads a team of five to ten researchers and applied engineers, with plans to expand. Pocket FM has more than three lakh creators and an audio series library of over one lakh titles. "Most AI tools today can get you to about 80% of human-level quality," Dixit said. "But we needed someone like Vasu to push that boundary -- developing models that can reach 95-99% accuracy in creative writing assistance, which requires serious research and custom model development." In September last year, the company launched its AI Creator Suite for Indian writers, aimed at enabling them to convert stories into fully produced audio series within a single day, significantly reducing research and post-production timelines. ET reported in April last year that Pocket FM's revenue for FY25 stood at Rs 1,768 crore, up 68% year-on-year, driven by expansion of its content catalogue and growth in key markets such as the US and India. The company has since entered the European market as well.

Pocket FM Appoints Vasu Sharma as Head of AI to Drive Next-Gen Audio Innovation

Pocket FM has taken a major step toward redefining the future of audio content by appointing Vasu Sharma as Head of AI. A recognized expert in large-scale multimodal AI and generative models, Vasu brings deep experience from global technology leaders and research labs, positioning Pocket FM to lead in AI-driven content personalization and next-generation storytelling. Before joining Pocket FM, Vasu served as Applied Research Scientist Lead at Meta, contributing to Facebook AI Research (FAIR) on trillion-scale multimodal foundation models. His work spans vision, language, audio, and generative AI, with multiple high-impact publications shaping the field. Vasu's career also includes roles at Amazon Lab126, Citadel, and advanced academic research at Carnegie Mellon University, where he led projects in multimodal learning, self-supervised learning, large language models, and computer vision. At Pocket FM, he will spearhead initiatives to make audio experiences more intelligent, personalized, and immersive, leveraging AI to enhance both creator and listener engagement. With this strategic hire, Pocket FM underscores its commitment to innovation and its ambition to reshape the digital audio landscape through cutting-edge AI technologies.