According to a recent survey by IVM Podcasts in collaboration with InMobi Pulse and InMobi group-owned Glance, the Indian podcast business has gained a number of new listeners over the previous 12 months, with 81% of them having heard their first ever podcasts during that time. The report surveyed 3,200 Indian podcast listeners with a 70:30 gender split between men and women.
Further, 73% of Indian audiences listen to English language podcasts and 40% of the 35-plus audience tuned in for the first time over the last six months. The top three favourite podcast genres were news policy (62%), comedy and entertainment (53%) and business and finance (47%). 97% of podcast audiences are tuning in from their smartphones and 56% trust brands advertised on podcasts.
Post the covid-19 pandemic, quite a few changes have been seen in podcast consumption. For example, 65% reported tuning into podcasts on their commutes pre-pandemic which shifted to 35% of listeners doing so post pandemic. Another post pandemic trend includes a higher number of listeners tuning into podcasts on weekends.
Further, 60% of audiences said they pay attention to content in podcasts over most other mediums and 47% of the podcast audience reported that they listened to podcasts while doing nothing else.
“Over the last year-year and a half, we have seen a rapid rise in the Universe of podcasts. Though a large number of new podcasts are coming up each day, the insights of each of them is not as expected by the teams behind it. The reason is obvious. Content goes hand in hand with business and marketing strategies. Just like any other creative industry, there will always be a need to create original and fresh content for your podcast, if you are looking to succeed in this industry,” says Abhishek Kapoor, an Indian Author of international bestsellers and founder of Digital Golgappa.
For those who don’t know, a podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Streaming applications and podcasting services provide a convenient and integrated way to manage a personal consumption queue across many podcast sources and playback devices.
