Yoto, the Audio Business of the Year Speakies shortlistee, which creates screen-free, card-based audio players and content for children, was founded in 2017 by Ben Drury and Filip Denker. The duo had previously worked together at Drury’s start-up, Seven Digital, a B2B platform that enabled other companies to build consumer-facing music services.

Inspired by the 10 Montessori principles of education – which include respect for the child, individualised learning and freedom of movement and choice – and the idea that children should have autonomy over their entertainment, the business fully launched in 2020 with the Yoto system, which consists of two main hardware components: the Yoto Player and the Yoto Mini.

Both devices work in conjunction with physical and digital audio cards featuring content from stories and music to educational material. By inserting a card into the player – such as the recently released KPop Demon Hunters card – children can instantly access audio content “without the need for screens or complicated interfaces”. It was when Drury and Denker started their own families “around the same time” that the idea to channel their audio expertise into a different kind of platform emerged.

“[Denker] has three kids, and I’ve got two boys, my first was born in 2013, and that was around the time that I was exiting from Seven Digital,” Drury explains. “We just hit on this idea. My kids went to a Montessori nursery, and that was influential, because I got indoctrinated into [that] world, the idea of a physical experience and independence, of the autonomy of children. And I always remember going to shop for a pram in John Lewis, and I spotted one on the market with an iPad dock or an iPad attachment built into the pram. And I remember thinking, and I’m a massive technophile: ‘No, this is so wrong, iPads in front of babies is horrific.’” He adds: “There’s a lot of evidence that listening to audiobooks can be a really great pathway into reading.”

The National Literacy Trust’s Children and Young People’s Listening in 2024 report showed that for the first time in four years more children and young people said they enjoyed listening to audiobooks than enjoyed reading physical books in their free time (42% compared to 35%).

Furthermore, almost two in five (38%) agreed that listening to an audiobook got them interested in reading books, and one in two children and young people said listening to audio enabled them to better understand a story or subject (48%). “So, all those factors came together to lead us to developing Yoto,” Drury says.  

The company hit the market in 2020 with the Yoto Player (which was followed by the Yoto Mini in late 2021), which proved timely, Drury reflects. “When we launched in February 2020, and then Covid-19 hit, we were all panicking, the world was ending, and we all at the time took a pay cut because we weren’t sure how long it was going to last and what impact it would have on our business. Maybe, in hindsight, it helped us, because kids were stuck at home with parents and screen time, and awareness of screen time and then maybe the perils of screen time became more prevalent.”

My kids went to a Montessori nursery, and that was influential, because I got indoctrinated into [that] world, the idea of a physical experience and independence, of the autonomy of children

Drury laughs that their inexperience of developing hardware made the experience of developing Yoto daunting and challenging, but also exciting. “When we started working on it, it was just fun. We were hacking away with soldering irons and laser cutters and all kinds of things,” he says. “We didn’t really know at that point that this could be a big business. We were just having fun and building something for our kids, but the moment we started testing it with other
families is when we had that ‘Aha’ moment and said, actually, this could be a thing, and it can be quite big.”

The company – now on its third-generation Yoto Player, which features stereo sound, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and an inbuilt room thermometer – has seen staggering growth since launching. Yoto’s 2023 turnover nearly doubled (£50.9m up from £27.6m), and in 2024 it jumped 86% to £94.8m.

The company’s greatest revenue was from North America (£73m), compared to £21m across the UK, Ireland, Canada and France. In 2024, the company secured a $15m funding package (approximately £11m) from HSBC “to support international expansion and further innovation in [Yoto’s] product line-up”, and in June 2024 it launched in Australia.

Also in 2024, “huge new licences” joined the Yoto library, including all of the Harry Potter books in collaboration with Pottermore Publishing, as well as Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon series, alongside Elton John’s Diamonds album and the Spice Girls’ Greatest Hits album in partnership with Universal Music Group.

The library now holds more than 1,800 titles, featuring partnerships with content creators and publishers such as Penguin Random House, Hachette, Sony, Disney, Bonnier, Warner Music and HarperCollins. “It’s a combination of licensed content, original content and also music,” Drury explains.

Just last week, Yoto launched a new literacy initiative with Bonnier, called Start with a Story, which encourages pupils to write their own audiobooks. These are then recorded by Bonnier and uploaded onto Yoto audio cards, before being donated, along with a new Yoto Player, to the school library.

Yoto has been named among the Sunday Times Top 20 Fastest Growing Companies 2024; the second Fastest Growing Tech Company in the UK in the Deloitte Fast 50 2023; Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in 2024; and Bloomberg’s 25 UK Startups to Watch in 2023. In May 2025,  Yoto was awarded the King’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

Moving forward, top of the agenda is expanding the library, pushing boundaries and reaching new markets. “We’re really looking to innovate,” Drury says. “So, we’re talking to our publishing partners all the time about doing innovative audio with us in either interactive or even a new type of content, which I’m calling dynamic audio’, where the audio can change according to time and place.”

Additionally, the company is integrating an aeroplane tracker into the system, which will give kids live public information of the flights going over their house at any time. He added: “Kids love really fun stuff like that […] I do think it’s a bit of a golden age for audio in general, because there’s a lot of innovation going on. I think AI is helping that. But, yeah, we’re looking to be at the forefront.”

On global expansion, Drury adds: “We’re only operating in five countries. We have aspirations to bring Yoto anywhere there are children. We have aspirations to expand the language range [Yoto currently offers English, French and Spanish], mostly for the US market, because there are so many Spanish speakers and because the US is definitely our biggest market. Then we hope to expand the library. We do have a pretty amazing kids’ audio catalogue, about 1,800 titles, but there is a lot more kids’ content out there than 1,800 titles. That is across music, across books and everything else.

“We do want to expand the library and continue to innovate. We think that there is a lot you can do with kids’ audio in a way that is beneficial to children, to help with vocabulary, learning and listening.”