Come Fall in Love with Chatty Podcasts by Indus Vox Media

We took a listen to a few of Indus Vox Media’s (IVM here on) podcasts available for free on SoundCloud. We learned that India’s biggest music festival was made in Estonia, and that some termites in Africa taste minty. There’s another podcast series on cricket and football from a team called The Fan Garage that will give you the low down on Virat Kohli, why he’s the next best thing since sliced bread and why IPL is – well IPL.

Welcome to the world of podcasts, the digital answer to the radio. It’s exactly like TV shows versus online videos. Before the TV came along Indians used to love sitting around an elder listening to the stories expounded with zeal and masala. And digital audio media production startups like Indus Vox Media is reviving and capitalizing that lost love.

This is Amit Doshi, the founder of Indus Vox Media, telling us more about the podcast making startup.

Why did you decide to found this venture?

IVM was launched in March 2015 because long form talk is a missing media category in India, i.e. we don’t have any talk radio. It felt like with the proliferation of mobile phones and high speed data there was a possibility to create this business using the internet as a medium of delivery bypassing the more traditional radio.

Share with us what’s special about this venture and how it’s different from its competitors?

We are laser focused on the audio market, specifically spoken and long form. I believe that the audio content market is underserved in this country, where our options are relatively poor.

How did you manage to fund this idea?

Got hold of private investors and personal funds.

What are/what will be your monetization paths?

There are several ways to monetize – ads against content is the biggest opportunity here. Besides that, we are looking at doing events in support of our shows, we are looking at possible opportunities in radio syndication, and providing content to other aggregators are all paths to monetization that we are working on.

Tell us how the business has grown so far

Growth has been phenomenal. We have had over 3 million ‘listens’ to content we have worked on since we started up. The growth rates have also been great, we are seeing an average 30 percent growth every month in terms of downloads. We are currently doing 3 daily shows and 15 weekly or biweekly shows

What marketing strategies and plans are in place to grow the business?

Currently we are concentrating on engaging audiences through social media and partnerships. As we go forward we will start looking at more traditional marketing activities.

What is the market size and opportunity?

The market size and opportunity is massive. Where the radio market is unrestricted, talk content typically has an audience touching 30 percent of the total radio market. I see this pattern holding as the shift to digital platforms accelerates and we can build a listening culture in this country.

Any challenges faced setting up? Anything unique to your situation?

One of the unusual aspects of this business is the word “podcast” is an evolving one - it’s both all encompassing (video podcasts, radio replays) and reductive (two people in front of a phone mic) at the same time. In some ways people associate it with Apple (iPod) but in others it’s an open standard (RSS). Figuring out the nomenclature for popular usage is one of the most unusual challenges in this business.

Share with us some of your best and worst memories while running the business

The best and worst are intertwined. The worst time in the business was last year – we had expanded the catalogue to 8 shows but we were working out of collocated spaces and were renting studio time. The sheer amount of running around at this time we all did was insane. The best time followed two months later when we were able to move into our own office and studio.