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India’s podcast market is getting increasingly competitive with entry of new players as well as expansion plans of the existing ones.
one of the largest podcasting players in the Hindi space, aawaz.com, has now announced the launch of its English edition. aawaz is India's largest podcast and spoken-word audio on-demand.
Live since January 2019 with over 500 hours of Hindi audio programming, the audio network has now expanded to Original Audio in English, competing with the likes of IVM, which recently expanded beyond its English library to foray into Hindi podcasts.
Last month, Amazon's audible audiobook platform launched its first podcasting platform targeting only for Indian audience through Audible Suno app. Even Spotify recently launched its first set of podcast originals in India.
Spotify also partners with aawaz and IVM for building its podcast library.
Aawaz offers unlimited access to its original content including audio shows, podcasts, all created, scripted and professionally produced in-house by aawaz. The app offers a ad-free experience and its offline mode lets the audience download episodes and listen on the go even without an active internet connection.
Lineup of English original audio shows
At the time of launch, listeners of aawaz will be able to access ten English original audio shows across genres including, Strategy AF with Cyrus Sahukar (humor) , An Emotion Called Bombay (culture) , The Unfundables (startups) , The Next Ten Years (technology) , The Pathbreakers (business) , Data Driven Marketing (upskill) , and Odobobo (a show for pet lovers) .
The english edition of aawaz will see the addition of new shows every week, as well as new episodes under existing shows.
Commenting on the English edition launch, aawaz.com's co-founder Sreeraman Thiagarajan said, "Our vision of creating products ground up to be relevant to Indian audience doesn't stop at regional languages. We see Indian English as a unique language and launching the aawaz english edition is to offer a differentiated experience to our listeners who currently have limited source of audio content created originally for Indian ethos and values"
India’s podcast market
According to a recent report by PwC, Indian podcast listeners numbered at 40 million by the end of 2018, a 58 percent rise from the year before. Growth is set to continue at a 34.5% CAGR to reach 76.1mn by 2023. In Agrahyah's opinion, the total number of podcast listeners in India becomes 600 million if Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi's ‘Mann Ki Baat’ is categorized as a podcast. In 2019, aawaz.com saw more than 4 Million streams per month on average on its app and web.
“The fresh new English content on aawaz aims to both elevate and entertain our listeners. Our research indicates podcast listeners on-the-go prefer listening to audio content that has utility value including knowledge, information, invigorating conversations in spoken-word format, and we have taken right efforts to offer exactly such high quality audio shows to our English listeners" says Rushabh Vasa, co-founder of aawaz.com
iOS edition of aawaz app for iPhone users is scheduled to launch later in January 2020.
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