UPDATE:
In continuation with our article on ‘Will Pod….work? – A Podcasters Perspective.’
Here is the podcast on the same carried by Kiruba Shankar.
WATBlog recently carried a post on ‘Desi Podcasting –it exists!’, which gave insights on podcasting in India. In continuation with the earlier post, we got in touch with Kiruba Shankar, an avid podcaster to gives his insight on the podcasting scenario in India.
Kiruba frankly states that, the Podcasting scenario in India is ‘Pathetic’. Numerically speaking he claims that there are at least 30-40 thousand bloggers in India, but he states “that there are very few podcasters, so much so that I wouldn’t be able to count them beyond my fingers.”
The reason for such low numbers according to Kiruba is Hesitance and Ignorance. “People are hesitant to come in front of the camera, or even record their voices. I know people who have gone ahead recorded either visuals or audios and have backed out after finding some form of imperfection.” . Kiruba reinforces that podcasting is for amateurs.
He believes that there is a general perception of podcasting being geeky. Another reason that he believes that people are hesitant in podcasting is because they are conscious. With Indian’s television industry booming, the perfect looking, non hesitant, confident speakers are flashed all over television, hence making people very skeptical about their image while podcasting.
Varam Oru Arayam, SangeetCast are a few of the vernacular podcast sites coming up. Kiruba believes that these vernacular podcasting sites will play a big role, for the podcasting scenario on a whole. “Vernacular Podcasts transcend ones ability to read. Most of the readers now are 2nd generation user, who may understand Hindi or other regional languages but may not be able to read the language.”
One of Kiruba’s favorite podcasting website is Podbazaar, because he believes it’s a great website for hosting videos and has great content. Kiruba was introduced to podcasting by Sujata, the founder of PODbazaar .
Despite the fact there are very few podcasters in India, Kiruba firmly believes that podcasting will pick pace in about 1 year. “It will be a niche medium, but it will commercialize, just like blogs”
In order to ward off the hesitance and ignorance that tails with podcasting, and introduce podcasting to just about anyone, Podwork will be taking place in …….
PodWorks is a 2-day workshop styled unconference dedicated to the sharing of knowledge around new / social media (audio and video podcasting, blogging, more.
Might I add the podworks party is booked at a picturesque beach house 
Kiruba who regularly podcast’s on Podtech, an avid contributor at Wikipedia and also a well-known blogger, will be heading Podworks. To get more information on podworks visit the website here.
Indians will surely use it in large numbers..
Shruti
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Fav site:
http://www.fukkad.com/
I feel there should be a site dedicated to podcasters just in mumbai…..especially to guys like me who travel for like more than an hr from home-office. it would be perfect to download some 'casts and hear them en route….
Can be news, interesting stuff, how to's etc etc
If not for Kiruba Shankar and Kamla Bhatt or maybe I should say Podtech India in general, I would be bored out of my skull…These guys are going to be instrumental in improving the podcast scene in India; although I should probably also mention plugged.in for at least trying…
I wonder if maybe someone has analyzed what a great service for India podcasting is..like I would bet that it is changing the mindset of Indians in genereal – especally those entrepreneur podcasts and blogs that inspire you.