India Didn't Miss the Podcast Bus; It Chose a Better Route
Everyone expected India to ride the podcast wave, just like the West. With global giants betting on long-form audio, experts predicted India would be the next big frontier for podcasts. But that didn’t quite happen.
India didn’t just adopt podcasts. It leapfrogged the format and built something radically different, local, and scalable.
From AI-narrated news in Odia to Bhojpuri thriller dramas and Gujarati spiritual content on-demand, the Indian audio space is evolving on its own terms. What’s emerging isn’t a copy-paste of Western podcasting models, but a new kind of regional-first, mobile-first, voice-first audio economy.
It’s not just content innovation - it’s a behavioural and infrastructural shift. And it's happening faster than most expected.
What the Numbers Say And Why They Matter
The explosion of regional audio platforms in India is more than a moment; it’s a movement.
• Pocket FM claims over 100 million downloads, with 60%+ consumption in regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Bhojpuri.
• Kuku FM, another major player, surpassed 2.5 million paid subscribers and raised significant funding to expand its regional audio library.
• Even educational and self-help categories in Marathi, Kannada, and Hindi are outperforming global podcasts in terms of daily retention.
But more importantly, the format itself has changed. India’s audio user doesn’t want two people talking for an hour on abstract topics.
They want:
• Short-form devotional mantras or narrations
• Serialized audio dramas in dialects
• AI-voiced explainers that mimic real conversation
• Bite-sized news and infotainment during chores or commutes
• Interactive audio stories where they choose what happens next
In short, they want relevance, brevity, and familiarity.
Why This Works in India
This isn’t just about preference. It’s about design: cultural, technological, and infrastructural.
1. Audio Works on Low-Bandwidth Connections
Most regional users don’t stream HD video. Audio is lighter on data, quicker to load, and far more forgiving of poor networks.
2. Voice Over Text, Any Day
Spoken content feels more intimate, especially in regional languages. A Hindi bedtime story feels like a family tradition. An English podcast, less so.
3. Multitasking Culture
Audio lets users cook, clean, travel, or work while consuming stories, education, or information. That’s a huge unlock in a country where multi-tasking isn’t a lifestyle choice; it’s a necessity.
4. Mass Smartphone Penetration But Not Premium Devices
Most of India uses mid- to low-range smartphones. Audio content doesn't need fast processors or high-res screens. It just needs reliable playback and buffer-free delivery.
The Expanding Use Cases of Vernacular Audio
What started with story-based content has now extended to areas no one predicted:
Commerce
IVR-based shopping platforms are letting users listen to product listings and order via keypad, no internet literacy required.
Learning & Skilling
Apps like Entri, Josh Skills, and Pocket FM’s learning categories are providing tutorials for spoken English, state exams, and job readiness.
Mental Health & Wellness
Meditation, spiritual audio, and even therapy-style formats are rising in languages like Marathi, Malayalam, and Bengali - again, AI narration is helping scale.
Kids and Elderly
Personalized bedtime stories for children and mythology audio formats for elderly listeners are bridging generations, all through voice.
This is not the podcast industry evolving. This is a new industry forming altogether, one where sound is both the medium and the message.
Our Take: The Future Is Voice-First - Is the Network Ready?
At Lytus, we’re observing this space very closely because the growth in regional language audio isn’t a fluke. It’s a reflection of how India actually consumes the internet.
We believe the question is no longer: “Will audio work in India?” It already is. The real question is: “Is our infrastructure designed to serve a voice-first India?”
Right now, most ISPs optimize for video streaming, gaming, and enterprise-grade bandwidth. But audio’s growth, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities tells us we need to look closer at the daily realities of our next 100 million users.
Here’s what that might mean:
1. Network Optimization for Audio
Most rural and semi-urban users are not watching YouTube at 1080p. They’re streaming Bhojpuri dramas on audio apps at 64kbps.
But even then, buffering ruins the experience. Optimizing for low-latency audio delivery, rather than just video, could unlock real satisfaction.
2. Adaptive Codec Support
Many platforms now use speech-optimized codecs (like Opus) that perform well under poor network conditions. ISPs should explore routing and caching models that enhance this delivery, especially in high-demand vernacular pockets.
3. Plans Designed for Audio-First Users
Not everyone needs 2GB/day. Some users want a cheaper, audio-optimized data pack that enables 3 hours of clean, uninterrupted streaming. That’s a packaging opportunity waiting to happen.
We’re not there yet. But we’re listening. To the way India listens. And that’s where the next move will come from.
Conclusion: India Isn’t Skipping Podcasts. It’s Building a New Format Entirely.
The Western model of podcasting didn’t fail in India. It just wasn’t built for us. Our realities, regional, multitasking, low-data, emotionally local, needed something else.
So India created it. This is more than innovation. It's an adaptation at scale.
For ISPs, creators, investors, and policymakers, the real opportunity is not to replicate what worked elsewhere, but to listen more closely to what’s being listened to here.
Because the future won’t just be video or text. In India, the future will be spoken.