ORIGINAL ARTICLE: 7 Best Indian Podcasts to Listen to
There are several Indian podcasts available as a result of the growing popularity of this medium.
Podcasts are becoming more popular all over the world, with celebrities and regular people getting in on the action.
Ranging from several minutes to several hours and about different subjects, podcasts are incredibly versatile.
For India, the country is the world’s third-largest consumer of podcasts with 5.76 million monthly listeners.
The country saw a 29.3% increase in podcast consumption in 2020 and is catching up with the USA and China.
Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director of Spotify India since April 2018 believes that podcasts have begun to show up more often in the charts because of this.
He said: “Because of the availability of more and more local content across languages, such podcasts have started to show up more in the charts, where it was predominantly global content in the previous years.”
With podcasts becoming so popular, we look at seven of the best Indian podcasts to check out.
Indian Noir
Indian Noir is India’s most critically acclaimed, chart-topping crime and horror storytelling podcast.
The fast-paced and gritty stories are set in India and they are written, narrated and produced by Commonwealth Short Story Prize and DWL Story Prize-winning writer Nikesh Murali.
The podcast includes plot-heavy audio stories.
These are focused on delivering a roller-coaster listening experience that is full of plot twists, thrills and scares.
But nevertheless, Indian Noir promises to keep listeners at the edge of their seats.
On how he created the podcast, Nikesh says:
“I had an epiphany. I always knew I had the talent to produce entertaining works of fiction.
“But maybe books were not the best medium for me.
“After all, oral storytelling has been around for a lot longer than books. So I combined my narration, audio production, and writing skills to create Indian Noir.”
She Says She’s Fine
This Indian podcast is a women’s health podcast that is hosted by gynaecologist Dr Munjaal V Kapadia.
His podcast deals with women’s health as well as general social stigmas and issues.
Each week on She Says She’s Fine, Dr Kapadia invites guests to open up and share their experiences like sex, periods, contraception and much more.
The podcast enables women to be open about taboo subjects and also hopes to educate men on these issues.
One listener commented: “It is so liberating to find somebody finally breaks the barriers between humans and addresses them not under the societal gender naming conventions of man and woman but to humanise them physiologically and psychologically and call them a man and a woman, as two sexes of the same species.
“There is so much I have learnt and grown listening about female heath, about what it must mean, about the psychological nuances behind physiological problems people of different genders face, and how beautiful it can be to find support.
“Thank you every single one of you who’s taken to time to talk on the show and educate the world.”
On the Contrary
On the Contrary by India Development Review (IDR) is hosted by Arun Maira.
Arun is a former member of the Planning Commission and former Chairman of the Boston Consulting Group.
In each episode, Arun speaks to experts as they share different perspectives on issues like caste, environment, agriculture and much more.
The podcast’s intention is to get people who might have contrasting stances on an issue and find a new, shared understanding.
One listener on Apple said: “The fact that you are able to get specialists with different backgrounds ergo views makes it for an interesting and more pleasurable debate.
“Mr Maira does a good job of summarising and gently nudging the panellists to go deeper into their arguments.”
Kahani Suno
Kahani Suno is a podcast that revisits the classic stories written by Jaishankar Prasad and Munshi Premchand.
The podcast is narrated by Sameer Goswami, which makes for crisp listening.
Because some episodes are as short as three minutes, listeners can binge-listen some of India’s classic literature.
Nalini Jayaraman is a fan of the podcast and said:
“I am immensely thankful to Suno Kahani podcast.
“I would have never imagined some will actually dig out Premchand and co. let alone know about these authors.”
“Sameer Goswami does an impressive job of narration. I am hoping that you will include some of Shivani, Mrinal Pande, and Mannu Bhandari. I can list so many more names but I am very sure you have an exhaustive list to include.
“This podcast has taken me back to my school days.”
Darr Ka Raaz with Dr Phobia
This Indian podcast was released in April 2021 and it adds another layer in the audio storytelling space.
Rajesh Khera takes on the role of psychotherapist Dr Grewal in this psychological horror podcast.
It sees the narrator talk about phobias, uncovering hidden secrets and treating patients through hypnosis and past life regression therapy.
When it was announced, Managing Director of Spotify, India, Amarjit Singh Batra, stated that podcasts can stimulate the imagination in a world saturated with video content.
He went on to say that they are continuing their efforts to bring relevant and relatable content to Indian listeners.
The Tastes of India
The Tastes of India is a regular bilingual cookery podcast that streams across various platforms.
For those looking to learn about cooking, this Indian podcast is great.
It focuses on quick and delicious Indian recipes and because it is a podcast, listeners do not need to login onto a computer and spend time finding a recipe.
Whether you are a young professional or the head of a family, there are a variety of recipes to suit everyone.
Because it is bilingual, this podcast is beneficial for both Hindi and English speakers.
I Hear You
The thriller genre is a popular podcast genre in India, so it is no surprise that I Hear You is one podcast to listen to.
I Hear You sees Aahana Kumra play Delhi Special Bureau detective Priyamvada Parmar.
Her life completely changes after she is involved in a car crash. Her husband is killed while she survives.
But, Priyamvada gains the power to hear supernatural sounds.
These sounds help her to uncover some horrific crimes as well as hidden truths about her own life.
For Aahana, podcasts were a new thing for her, but she was encouraged to “just come for a reading” by I Hear You creator Mantra Mugdh.
She explained: “You are there in a recording room, and you are facing one of those fancy microphones and holding the script in your hand, and it is very different from acting with people, where you are reacting to them and getting what you need from them for a scene.
“But when I read Mantra’s first script and went through it a couple of times, I found Priyamvada’s voice and the kind of a person she was and since then I have become completely immersed in that world, and keep bugging Mantra about future episodes.”
These seven Indian podcasts provide a welcome change than just listening to music.
There is a variety of genres to please all kinds of podcast lovers.
So, if you’re looking for an interesting podcast to listen to, check some of these out!
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