Kavita Rajwade On The New Era Of Podcasts In India With IVM

Podcasts were common in the US as early as the 2000s, but India took a long, long time to catch up with the phenomenon. People had been experimenting with podcasts in India as well, but the market could not grow enough. When Amit Doshi and Kavita Rajwade launched IVM as a podcasting destination, the podcasts’ market in India had very few big players. Founded in 2015, the company managed now boasts of popular podcasts such as What The Hell Navya and Cyrus Says. Other podcasts from IVM include The Habit Coach, Paisa Vaisa and Shunya One.

Agreeing that they had a market to create before they could plan on ruling it, Rajwade says, “The best compliment I could get, something I will take to grave, is that we made learning fun. Our second most popular category is public policy. Our simple aim was to find smart people and make smart content. When we started out, people told us it was a stupid idea to focus on audio when videos were ruling the sector. We knew we did not have the kind of money required for the creation of video content. We focus on infotainment rather than entertainment, and use our assets in the best possible way.”

Since IVM’s inception, consumption of podcasts have grown by leaps and bounds – KPMG’s Media and Entertainment Report 2020 recorded a 29.3 % increase for India in 2020.

Rajwade adds that film content is always the easy way out to get better engagement but it was a risk IVM took to stay away from that in the initial years. Prior to IVM, Rajwade had worked with Sony Music Entertainment and Only Much Louder Entertainment.

Talking about roping in some of the biggest celebs for their podcast last year, Rajwade says, “One of the reasons we did What The Hell Navya was (that) I thought Indian girls and women do not usually sit with our grandmothers and talk about important topics. They (grandmoms) were navigating life in the 1950s and 1960s – they did what they did in that era (and that must have been a major struggle). They were fiery women. So, we thought of getting the three generations to talk about issues such as sexual and mental health.” The show features Bollywood star Jaya Bachchan along with her daughter Shweta Bachchan and granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda.

“Everyone knows Jaya as the actor-parliamentarian, Shweta is a great person having raised an amazing kid like Navya. But, we wanted to strip them of their public images and celebrity status. So, you can hear three generations of women talking about issues that affect everyday lives of women.”

The show has brought the limelight on podcasts like never before, given the audience pull of the celebrities involved. Rajwade believes the show did for podcasts what OTT did for Hindi content – open a new avenue of unexplored content. “It was our big pop-culture moment, so was a mention on Kaun Banega Crorepati (Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire, hosted by Amitabh Bachchan). As a cash-strapped company that could not spend much on marketing, we enjoy that kind of marketing.”

She adds, “The biggest pat on my back was making a non-film content show with film people. So many people called and told me ‘you forgot to introduce Jaya as a Parliamentarian’ and I told them that she may be a Parliamentarian but to her granddaughter, she is just her grandmom. I wanted to make more conversations in the safe space of homes. As young women, we need that safe space and I want to stress on the fact that that safe space is your mom and grandmom. With Navya’s show we managed to do that.”

Having worked in the media industry for more than a decade, Rajwade was not new to gender biases and perceptions that often block the road for women players. However, she prefers not to focus on those. “My time at IVM has been the calmest in my career, because through my 10-15 years of career in media, I was the only woman at a table full of men 90% of the times. It was scary how media worked in that time. I believe leadership makes a lot of difference and here at IVM, I hope I bring that differemce. Personal ambition is very important. I know enough men struggling in their realms. I may not see the change I want in this world, but I am doing my best, maybe for the next generation.”

(This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity)