PPVPay-per-view revenue held throughout. We shipped subscription without touching the coin economy. That constraint shaped the model, the touchpoints, and the decision to keep Premium beside coins instead of above them.

The data also made the shape of adoption clear: India carried 94% of active subscribers. Premium was becoming an India-led layer beside coins, not a replacement for the coin engine.

Repeat behaviour mattered most: a third of Indian subscribers have re-subscribed at least once, and repeat subscribers drive nearly half of India subscription revenue.

The screens above make the solution look direct. The hard part was the model underneath. When I joined Pocket FM in October 2024, listeners bought coin packs and spent them to unlock episodes. That PPVPay-per-view economy generated most of the revenue.

Premium

1. 1Just an Old BookEpisode 1, already included
2. 2Daily QuestLock point10Episode 2, requires 10 coins
3. 3Military School10Episode 3, requires 10 coins
4. 4Ability Level10Episode 4, requires 10 coins
5. 5No Ability10Episode 5, requires 10 coins
6. 6Result10Episode 6, requires 10 coins
7. 7Same Ability10Episode 7, requires 10 coins

One day of listening = 60 coins.

6 episodes × 10 coins. More episodes mean more coin spend.

Users kept asking for subscription. They wanted more access, less friction, and a value story they could understand mid-listening. The business needed recurring revenue. I had to design one Premium model that served both while keeping the listener promise and the revenue model separate. The constraint was firm: PPV revenue had to hold. A generous plan would collapse the coin economy. A restrictive plan would stall conversion.

There was no prior subscription product. I was starting from zero.

After V1 shipped, user researcher Rachit Jain ran qualitative interviews with R2+2nd renewal cancellations. I joined the plan and calls, then reframed V2 around the real churn trigger: users saw an unexpected bank debit and felt consent had broken. One line kept coming back: "Bina puchhe paisa kaat liya." Money taken without consent. We also observed that ~1 in 5 renewal attempts failed.

Before locking the model, we tested the major shapes a subscription could take: full app access, 120-min daily unlocks, 90-min, catalogue models with a fixed set of free shows, extra coin bundles. We saw each option strain a different side of the economy. A generous plan would damage PPVPay-per-view revenue. A restrictive plan would stall conversion. I centered the strategy on trust: users had to see why a constrained model was worth paying for even when it could not promise unlimited access.

I used two filters for each construct: does the user understand what they are getting, and does the business survive if they do? The 60-min daily unlock passed both.

I read experiment data, joined cancellation interviews and user calls, then pressure-tested each construct with product, research, and engineering. From there, I made the model legible, trustworthy, and worth paying for.