This is an audio transcript of The Morning Brief podcast episode: name of the episode: Audio Evolution to Podcasting Revolution

Anirban Chowdhury  

How has the Audio Broadcasting medium evolved in India? What have Indians been listening to over the years? 

BG Sound  

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This is to morning brief from the economic times. 

Anirban Chowdhury  

The reason I took you on this oral journey today is that the morning brief has achieved a milestone our 300th episode. Today we decided to look at the space we are part of the medium of TMB the business of audio, especially podcasting and its growth in India. So listen to this. In 2018, only approximately 14 million of India's 500 million internet users had ever listened to a podcast in 2020. As the pandemic changed our consumption patterns, we became a nation of 58 million monthly podcast listeners, the third largest consumer of podcasts in the world behind us and China. And there's been a steady growth since then. But what is this growth really worth? Our podcasts making money in India? Are the country's bigger brands acknowledging podcasts to be part of a growth segment? Are they putting money where their ears are through ads and sponsorships? Are we going to catch up with the rest of the world especially the west where the listenership is several multiples of us? Or is the strange transient? All this and more today? It's the 23rd of August. From the economic times I'm honored van Chaudry and today we explore audio evolution to podcasting revolution on the morning brief.

Our guests today are Dhruvank Vaidya head of podcasts at Spotify, India, and veteran brands man Rohit Ohri currently the chairman and CEO of advertising agency FCB Olga Dhruvank, Rohit, welcome to this very special 300th episode of the morning brief.

Dhruvank Vaidya  

Thank you and everyone Great to be here.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Dhruvank. I'd like to start with you. How has audio listenership and I'm excluding music here. How has it evolved in India in the last three years? What are people listening to?

Dhruvank Vaidya  

So as you rightly said, Spotify started in India about slightly over three years back, and podcast came with it because our global catalog came with it. And we started creating originals two and a half years back. So right from day one, our listeners had access to all the best of global content that we had. But over time, as we started creating our own content, we saw that there was a growing preference for Indian content. While on the platform, you have the best of let's say, New York Times or BBC and what have you. But we saw that our listeners are preferring a lot of content, which has local context, one big thing that we saw that was different from our other countries, was that fiction took off really well for us. We do a large amount of detective shows, or thrillers, and that is doing really well for us today as well. And as you know, like in India, we are like a country that loves stories. daily soaps on TV are like chartbusters across all languages in India. So I think that was not that big of a surprise was the other big area that we saw growth in was influencer life. Like what we have one format where we get let's say, you're an influencer on other social media, and we get them on board and have them start a podcast on Spotify. What that does is that it gives the influencers audience another way of being closer to their to someone who they admire, and that thing has taken up very well for us. What has also grown over the last three years is Indian language content. Like earlier we were started programming in Hindi, but now we see a huge traction in languages like Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, etc. So yeah, and finally, we have a UGC platform per anchor. Where we are seeing content being created in 13 Indian languages? So yeah, I think we've kind of moved quite quite a bit in the last year.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Any numbers that you can give me on the growth of the podcast segment, etc, that would be really nice.

Dhruvank Vaidya  

Well, one number that I can share with you is that today we about one in every four listeners on Spotify as a podcast listener.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Right, right. Another figure that I got is that in q1 of calendar year 2022, Spotify saw a 140 1% increase in listenership among the Gen Z, which is the 18 to 24 year olds. I mean, I'm I'm obviously more interested to know about how news podcasts are doing because, I mean, we've been growing. I'll shamelessly plug TMB here. And we are now amongst the top 10 News podcasts on Spotify, India, and among the top five on on Apple podcast. So how are those doing? And also wanted to ask you to tell me a little bit about the demographics of listenership? You know, the age groups if it's gender specific? Could you give me a little bit of detail on that, please?

Dhruvank Vaidya  

So first, our news guests, as you rightly observed, news is growing well, also, we have this category called expert speak, where there are interviews with experts in their specific fields. And those are also the areas that are doing really well on Spotify. In terms of the demographics, we see that a majority of our listeners are Gen Z, I mean, almost 80% are below the age of 35. So that way, our podcast listeners who are very young, in terms of gender ratio, I think it's mirroring what is there on the internet today, two

Anirban Chowdhury  

or three years that Spotify has been in India, were affected by the pandemic, surely, that gave a huge boost to this demand for audio content right Dhruvank. 

Dhruvank Vaidya  

So the COVID pandemic was quite a, quite a drastic event in our lives. And we were forced to kind of adapt new habits. Even on audio, the listening shifted from listen during commute to being sitting at home, or doing household chores. A lot of people took on exercises and formed some routine there. And they started listening to podcasts there. While things opened up, we suddenly found that these habits have continued. And that was the big aha moment for us as well, is that now, if they were listening to podcasts, doing chores, they found some, some shows that they loved, and people are continuing to listen to them. So I think that's where the big power of streaming comes is that you have content on demand, you have a huge variety of content that you can pick and choose from.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Okay. In fact, I saw this culture next report of Spotify. I mean, with said that listenership while driving has increased some 2,000%. I mean, obviously, there's a lower base that we're talking about, because it was COVID. But that's quite significant also, and shows that I mean, even post COVID, that trend, and demand has sustained, right, Dhruvank.

Dhruvank Vaidya  

Correct. And I think there is a little bit of help from the ecosystem as well, because earlier cars used to have CD players. Today you have the audio system, you can connect with Bluetooth, so it's very easy to connect your phone to the audio system. And then your favorite app starts playing

Anirban Chowdhury  

Rohit coming to you. Now, the point where you come in basically, your job is to find that intersection point between content, consumer and brand. So what a brand likes is a reflection of what a consumer likes. So in terms of audio content, what clicks I mean, of course, fiction does as drunk told us, but it's more nuanced than that, right? For instance, a recent report said that the consumers of Tik Tok videos lose patience just after one minute, which is why of course Insta reels are so big. What is that intersectionpoint for, say, podcasts? 

Rohit Ohri  

The way we look at it is not really specifically talking about podcasts because that kind of narrow casts the space really, I think what we really look at is audio content on a broader level, right saying that, what is the value that we can create for brands through audio content? And I think that then becomes a very interesting conversation because, you know, one of the things that we've seen, you know, if you look at it today, the whole thing is that when you have Instagram and Facebook, they count three seconds of consumer tension as a view, and the average human attention is shorter than you know that of a goldfish. The question then, is what gets people to listen too long? All right. So in the question of storytelling and in, you know, an average podcast would be anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes, what is actually getting people's interest in getting them to listen. And I think that specifically is about connection, right. So how deeply I can connect with what consumers want to listen to, you can target specific interest groups, right. So people who are into travel or traveling to exotic destinations, people into food. So those specific interest groups can be targeted. And then they're happy to listen to long format, because it is of their interest. And I think that is the fundamental spur for growth is really about interest groups. And being able to intersect brands with these interest groups were fundamentally what the brand actually brings to these interest groups is really more value, richer, deeper, more meaningful experiences.

Anirban Chowdhury  

So for example, if I am the executive producer of the Morning Brief, and if I approach a brand, how should I market my podcast? What should I say that will convince them? And will they be convinced at all? I mean, take any brand that you sort of work with?

Rohit Ohri  

So the thing is that this is it's an evolution, right? So is this the easiest way this this requires a lot of hard work from the marketing and the advertising agencies, quite honestly, to, to really focus and understand target audiences and look at these smaller target audiences and find deeper connections there? Right? So then my suggestion would be that what you need to do is to do a full analysis of your target audience, who are they? What are they interested in? You know, and what do they really care for, and then target very specific brands that speak that that language, you know, for, for instance, it's possible to target a very different type of brand, like the Royal Enfield, for instance, which which talks, very specific interest groups, and people who really are believers versus buyers. So those Levers is really where you need to intersect with your platform and say that be able to communicate with these believers in a deeper, richer, more meaningful manner and build greater loyalty, greater trust for your brand. I think that is the best way to do this at this point in time.

Anirban Chowdhury  

And how much money are we really talking about? How much are our brands willing to spend?

Rohit Ohri  

It's very premature right now, you know, on a run, I don't think I have numbers for you really talk about?

Anirban Chowdhury  

So can you talk about an audio campaign that did really well, 

Rohit Ohri  

we've done this. For specific groups, like for women, we've actually created client of ours came in wanting to create awareness about anemia, and about iron deficiency. And we created we actually tied up with a lot of the influencers and got them to really talk about this in an audio content format, where they explained why it was important to really look at iron. And the interesting thing there was, we actually launched this entire effort during Honduras. So when women were really talking and the mind space was occupied with gold and purchase of gold, as is tradition in northern India. For the terrorists, we actually communicated this to women saying that there's a different metal that you need to be really investing in, and that metal was iron, because it turned gold inside you. So that then became a very interesting context in which we could put the message and then that spurred a lot of audio content. And that then became very, very popular.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Dhruvank, would you say Indian podcasts, fiction or nonfiction are getting more ads than before?

Dhruvank Vaidya  

I think the big opportunity for podcasts while yes, we have impressions based advertising, and then you get a good understanding of what kind of demographic you're hitting. So that way, there is a lot of value there. I think the big space and Rohit also hinted at it is to create branded content. If you look at branded content, from the video side, about 30 to 50% of your overall outlay goes in creating the content producing the content, given the nature of audio for a branded content audio piece, the cost of production is not that high, which means you have much more leeway to spend on media to kind of amplify your message. So I think from that perspective, podcast is a very powerful medium.

Anirban Chowdhury  

That's an interesting point you say about being less cost intensive. Then say creating videos etc. Great. So I would like to take you to a point that drunk mentioned right at the start of the interview, which is that, you know, it's mostly social media influencers whose podcasts are doing well, people who are already popular on other platforms. For example, a Dhruv Rathi or a Rnveer Allabadia, who already have a massive number of followers on YouTube or Instagram would obviously have followers on Spotify as well. When do we get to a stage where a person can start a podcast and then become an influencer? Which is, which is happening a lot in the West? Are we very far from that stage? yet? I don't think

Rohit Ohri  

so. Because, you know, with DIY platforms, I think that's really aided the growth of independent content producers and increasing the amount of fresh content available, I think we've seen, you know, and I was at a panel in in in gorefest, this year where we were talking to young influencers and how they actually grew through the podcast. So they started small, and then they actually became bigger. And then large companies like Spotify actually gave them a platform as well. So I think it's still small, but it really is about how you latch on to something that really consumers have a latent need for. And that fundamentally is spurring the growth and and you could actually go the route of act starting as a podcast and becoming an influencer. And then of course, having larger platforms.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Right. So drunk finally to you. Do you think this whole trend is transient? And why I'm asking you this is because, you know, not all audio platforms in India doing well or, for example, audibles India business doesn't seem to be doing too good. Spotify as losses globally have also been growing and I don't want you to get into numbers, but you know, just putting it out there. So while music listenership is robust and non music is also growing, with Spotify, continue to bet on India's non music segment, especially podcast will you continue to take that risk?

Dhruvank Vaidya  

I would say that fiction and influencer talk are just low hanging fruit for us, but there are a lot of spaces that we have not yet explored, fully acknowledged and learning is a very big space and we see that there is a lot to be done there. I mean, you see how audio is so am unable to learn it, then doing it in multiple Indian languages giving content for revision giving content for just your learning, etc. There are a lot of opportunities there. So I think we are quite excited about the prospects of India's growth in the spoken word audio space, and we continue to build the business.

Anirban Chowdhury  

Thank you. Thank you so much, Rohit and Dhruvank, this has been lovely, thank you so much, both of you.

Rohit Ohri  

Thanks. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, enjoyed the session.

Dhruvank Vaidya  

Thank you Anirban for having us on the show.

Anirban Chowdhury  

So in this podcasting space holds some promise, India's podcasters are prolific. The medium has caught the fancy of the Gen Z in a big way. And the segment is growing rapidly. But it continues to be fairly niche, and only a specific chunk of that segment has become really popular. Plus, we aren't sure if big money or big brands are chasing the segment yet. We don't know what the future holds. But here's hoping podcasting in India grows really big. Rather than becoming just another trend that caught the fancy of people for a while, and then fizzled out. We'd like to leave you today with a special segment to tell you what podcasting means for us at the morning brief. As we reach episode 300 We'd like to give you a glimpse of our journey so far, a journey through the titles of our episodes, where we have explored, analyzed and broken down the biggest news stories. So as journalists, our primary job is to ask questions, right? That's exactly what we've done at TMB.

BG Sound  

is India's funding winter here? Can Jet Airways fly again?Is your data safe on aarogaya setu go or go? Won't? Is India Omicron ready? IPL does the math add up? When Tata super Asterix BNPL trap or treat? Ashneer grover ko gussa

Anirban Chowdhury  

and we've tried to find answers in the biggest corporate and political stories, issues and trends.

BG Sound  

You're listening to data Shapoorji Pallonji group negotiations for won't make in India. Murthy Suzuki's electric Amrit budget with cm Yogi Epicenter Nandigram decoding battleground Bihar as Afghanistan Sri Lanka's crisis. India's concerns India's power crisis. The India inflation story, Tata Steel hot again, the great MNC migration, the future of Amazon versus reliance. Adani versus somebody versus the fight for 5g, friends family and savvy Netflix, it ain't looking up. Indians co workers follow Bilgin prescription cannabis treat bombs from a short demo than 

Anirban Chowdhury  

we've never really shied away from uncomfortable truths.

Dia Rekhi  

No Country for women, no country for big birds, no country for crypto. 

Anirban Chowdhury  

And since we are the economic times, we explore various forms of economics, including

BG Sound  

soccer nomics, sinamics for economics, climate economics,

Anirban Chowdhury  

and we'd like to end with the voices that have brought to you the 300 episodes of the morning brief, through considerable effort, makes you studios at home, loads of lessons, and quite a number of bloopers. 

BG Sound  

Just one second. Just give me a minute. Do I need to switch off the fan? Yeah. I'm your host Surijit I am indulekha arvind. I'm your host Anirban Chowdhury. This is Ratna Bhushan from the economic times Mr. Ajit Barman Dia Rekhi Kiran Somwanshi I'm your host Nehal Chailawala Kalpana Pathak Bhavya Dilip Kumar I'm your host, Devina Sengupta. Rachita Prasad Shashvank Mohanty, Anjali Vengopalan Yeah. Recording outro

Anirban Chowdhury  

and you're listening to

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the morning brief in the morning brief only on the morning brief. That's all for today. 

Producers for the episode. This is Surbhi Modi from the economic times Vinay Joshi from et Soundarya Jayachandran. From Aawaz Sound Editors inIndranil Bhatacharjee from et and Rajas Naik from the economic times executive producers Anupriya from the economic times I am Ajit Barman, 

Anirban Chowdhury  

the rest of the team not part of this episode, but an integral part of who we are 

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Sumit Pande from et, Swati Joshi from Aawaz do, like, share and subscribe if you liked this episode. The morning brief drops every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. do tune in to Et play our latest platform for all audio content, including the morning brief. Fantastic, fantastic Yeah,

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