AI could increase content supply 1,000-fold, cut production time sharply: Kuku FM COO

Artificial intelligence (AI) could increase the supply of content by 1,000 times while significantly shrinking production cycles, according to Vinod Kumar Meena, Co-Founder and COO of Kuku FM.

“The content supply that we used to get is going to grow 1,000x,” Meena said in an interview with CNBC-TV18 at the Storyboard18 Global GenZ Summit.

AI is already cutting the time required to develop content. Meena said a 100- to 200-minute show script that earlier took about a month to complete can now be closed in around five days as AI helps writers generate ideas and develop storylines faster.

According to Meena, AI is not only changing the content production process but also allowing companies to experiment with new products and businesses much faster. Kuku FM can now put two to three people on a new project, develop an initial version within a week and take it to the market to gather consumer feedback.

Earlier, such experiments could take at least six months and require a larger team and significantly more resources, he said.

“Earlier, if you were trying 10 things in a year, now you can try 1,000 things in a year. That is how AI is changing the entire way of doing business,” Meena said.

Faster experimentation changes business planning

Meena said the biggest change brought about by AI is the shrinking feedback cycle. Companies no longer need to plan every aspect of a product or business years in advance before taking it to market.

Instead, businesses can launch an initial version, or V0, gather feedback and progressively build V1, V2 and subsequent versions based on how consumers respond.

“Whatever we build is a hypothesis. But when you truly go out in the market and try things, that is when you collect knowledge and you plan better,” he said.

Meena said this approach is applicable not just to content but also to products and businesses. At Kuku FM, smaller teams can now develop an initial product quickly, start marketing it and collect data on consumer behaviour before making further iterations.

He said AI is effectively lowering the barrier to experimentation, allowing companies to try significantly more ideas with the same amount of time and resources.

AI transforms content supply

Meena said content has historically evolved with changes in the way consumers access it — from theatres to television, OTT platforms and now mobile phones.

At each stage, consumer choice has expanded while the length of individual content

formats has generally fallen. Four-hour films gave way to one-hour television episodes, followed by shorter OTT episodes and now formats such as two-minute microdramas on mobile.

The same shift has happened across other formats, with books evolving into web novels and comics into webtoons.

“The number of choices for the consumer is growing, attention span is dropping, and the supply is growing 100-fold, 100 times, every transition,” Meena said.

AI is now accelerating the supply side of this transformation. Meena said junior writers can increasingly use AI to generate ideas and work at a level that previously required more experienced resources.

He said generative AI has had a particularly significant impact on content because production cycles and the associated cost dynamics are changing rapidly.

India could become more important in AI

Meena expects India to become increasingly important as AI adoption grows globally, arguing that the technology remains heavily dependent on the people operating it.

“AI is as good as the human operating it,” he said, pointing to India's large pool of English-speaking and trainable talent.

He expects developed economies to require manpower to carry out work enabled by AI, creating an opportunity for India.

Meena also said Kuku FM expects to hire a large number of people over the next five years and use AI to help solve problems globally.

Listed companies need to become more agile

For listed companies, however, the transition to AI could be more difficult because they typically operate with more structured and linear planning processes, Meena said.

Companies need to move away from the assumption that they can map out their business journey several years in advance.

“With the introduction of AI, your journey becomes more sinusoidal. You try 10 things, one thing works, and so on,” he said.

Meena said businesses need to become more agile because it is increasingly difficult to predict how technology and markets will evolve over the next decade.

He also urged people to move beyond using AI simply as a chatbot. Instead, users should build workflows and skill files and apply AI to more complex, day-to-day problems.

“The biggest bottleneck is that still the majority of people are using AI only as a chatbot,” Meena said.