Podtech launches India centric channel…though its early days for podcasting in India

Podtech, the Silicon Valley based podcasting startup has recently launched a India centric podcasting channel. The channel went live a couple of weeks back and is picking up momentum slowly. Podtech is sourcing its Indian content from a bunch of Indian bloggers/writers (that bunch, incidentally, includes my own insignificant self as well), who will contribute audio, video and textual content to them on a regular basis. The channel hopes to provide Indians (whether in India or abroad) a comprehensive coverage of news & views related to technology, entrepreneurship, trends in internet & ecommerce, tech events etc in a podcasting format.

When I was first approached by them, my spontaneous (internal) reaction was – “Podcasting in India?? Who’s going to listen to podcasts here?”. I would have thought that podcasting is in a very nascent stage in India. And video blogging (something that most serious podcasters are slowly drawn into) is just non-existent. So what is the inherent rationale behind Podtech’s move to launch this channel?

I think this is like the proverbial “glass half empty/full” situation. The pessimists would say- “since it is almost non existent, it has no potential and is not worth pursuing”. The optimists, on the other hand would stick out their neck and say – “because it does not exist in this country and it is an emerging Web2.0 trend worldwide, it will happen some time pretty soon here as well. Let me get in and become the early bird, that catches the worm”.

Well, the latter viewpoint seemed to prevail on me and that’s why I have joined their contributing team. From a personal standpoint, there are a couple of reasons that have motivated me in doing so. Firstly, it gives me the opportunity to explore a completely untried medium (voice/video). Secondly it gives me a perfect excuse to walk upto some of the movers & shakers in the Indian tech landscape, introduce myself and initiate a conversation with them, while coaxing them into a podcast interview.

In Silicon Valley, podcasting is a veritable industry. Many podcasting startups have recently got funded and they have very aggressive plans. People are betting big on this space, and these companies are starting to attract some highly talented people. Robert Scoble (who needs no introduction) now works for Podtech and his podcast, called ScobleShow, is the piece de resistance on Podtech’s website.

While on podcasting, here are a few other Indian podcasting sites/channels that merit being discussed here.

PodMasti- This site is run by Bangalore based Ruchita Gupta, (who I happened to meet at the Bangalore Barcamp in April, earlier this year). Her site is probably the most visited Indian podcasting site as on date and she has been featured in many publications. Her podcasts though (as the name PodMasti suggests) are mostly about Bollywood and stories/gossip related to it.

Podbazaar- This site is run by Sujatha Jagannathan, who is based in the US. Podbazaar has podcasts from different contributors and the topics for its podcasts are quite widespread, ranging from arts, religion, spiritituality to health, tech etc.

(Both the above sites though are run by individuals and hence it would be improper to compare them to Podtech, which is a complete podcasting company. I have not included the Kamla Bhatt Show in the above list, since Kamla is also on Podtech’s contributor list. Her radio/podcast shows are quite popular).

Sunil Gavaskar’s cricketing podcasts on Yahoo- this is a section on Yahoo’s Indian portal that features podcasts from the “little master” about cricket. Gavaskar, incidentally is a very gifted commentator and backed up by some high voltage outdoor advertising, I would assume that this must be a pretty popular channel.

It’ll be interesting to see which is the first company to launch a complete podcast based business in India. I predict it’s going to be a good while before that happens.