BENGALURU: Sneha Kalra has always liked listening to podcasts but has found a newfound love for aural content in Kannada. She has been listening to it while doing house chores during the lockdown. “It’s a good way for me to brush up my language too,” says the homemaker, who listens to at least one episode of different podcasts every day. Kalra isn’t the only one tuning in to Kannada podcasts now. Recently, a city-based digital publication house, MyLang Books, was launched, with the aim to bring out high-quality ebooks and audio books in Kannada.
According to Pavan Srinath, who hosts the Thale-Harate Kannada Podcast with Ganesh Chakravarthi and Surya Prakash BS, his work has seen steady growth since its launch in December 2018. “We now have tens of thousands of listeners every month,” he says. City-based gaatha story, which produces the Baalgaatha podcast, launched the Kannada edition of their bedtime stories for children last year. Listenership grew from 5,000 to 30,000 in just 20 episodes.
According to Srinath, 2019 was when Indian podcasting came into its own, after media houses, think tanks, independent podcasters and others started investing in it. “It was also the year you could get the Google Podcasts App natively installed on android smartphones. Spotify also arrived in India last year,” he explains. Agrees Amar Deshpande, co-founder, gaatha story whose venture was launched in 2016. They waited for three years before dipping their toes in Kannada, Telegu and Gujarathi aural content. “We just had to wait for the right enabling ecosystem of narrators and script and audio editors,” points out Deshpande, who explains that finding a narrator with the right accent takes time.
Though the number of Kannada podcasts is still few, creators are not holding out when it comes to experimenting with genres. While gaatha story’s Baalgatha caters to children’s folktales, Srinath’s Thale-Harate brings about “rich conversations in Kannada about topics generally reserved in English.” For example, some episodes have had discussions, going beyond an hour, on issues like coronavirus biology, diagnostics and drug development. On the other hand, Karma is a Witch by Prathidhwani is a 3D horror-suspense-thriller in Kannada and Hindi.
It is this diversity that Chethan Narayanaswamy thinks is drawing people towards podcasts. The Prathidhwani proprietor says, “People want passive content to consume while doing other tasks.” Agrees Sharath Kumar, who is associated with Nallikayi podcast, who adds, “There is no dearth of Kannada listeners. You just have to offer the content.” Most creators agree that podcasting in Kannada has a long way to go, but the future seems bright. While the same episode in English and Kannada sees 5,000 downloads each, it’s the latter that gains more engagement, says Srinath. He adds, “The English one will have 5-10 comments but Kannada will have 30. If we miss an episode, people enquire what happened. This makes it a very fulfilling experience for us.”