Building India’s Podcasting Ecosystem from Scratch with Gautam Raj Anand

Ever wondered how an entire nation discovers a medium that's been thriving elsewhere for decades? Meet Gautam Raj Anand, widely known as "the father of podcasting in India," whose remarkable journey from bored banker to pioneering podcast innovator reveals what happens when necessity meets opportunity.

Gautam's story begins with corporate firewalls that blocked traditional entertainment but overlooked podcasts—a serendipitous oversight that led to his 14-hour-a-day listening habit. This personal discovery sparked a data-driven revelation: India possessed the perfect conditions for podcasting to flourish—high commute times, cheap data, numerous languages, and a rich oral tradition—yet remained virtually untouched by the medium. The challenge? Most Indians had never heard the term "podcast," and those who had associated it with expensive Apple products they couldn't afford.

What follows is a masterclass in problem-solving as Gautam walks us through building Hubhopper, evolving from a simple content aggregator to a comprehensive ecosystem addressing each barrier to podcast creation and consumption in India. His team had to forge partnerships with music platforms, in-cab entertainment, and news applications to create distribution channels where none existed. The results speak volumes—India has transformed from a podcast desert to the world's third-largest podcast market in less than a decade.

Particularly fascinating are the distinct differences between Western and Eastern podcast consumption patterns. While Western listeners embrace hour-long shows focusing on true crime, sports, and comedy, Indian audiences prefer shorter episodes (under 25 minutes) with religious and devotional content leading by a significant margin. These insights reveal how cultural contexts profoundly shape media consumption even within the same medium.

Whether you're a podcast creator, media entrepreneur, or simply curious about global digital trends, Gautam's perspective will transform how you think about content creation across cultural boundaries. Subscribe now and discover how sometimes all it takes is "20 seconds of insane courage" to spark a revolution that changes how an entire nation communicates.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Gautam Raj Anand
• 4:47 From Banking to Podcasting Discovery
• 9:58 Why Podcasting Works in India
• 16:21 Building Hubhopper's Tech Ecosystem
• 24:28 Differences Between Western and Eastern Markets
• 31:25 The Future of Podcast Content
• 38:04 AI's Impact on Podcasting
• 43:36 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode, Gautam Raj Anand, the father of podcasting in India, pioneer in the medium. I love it, Gautam. Welcome to the podcast.

Gautam: 0:50

Thank you so much for having me Such a pleasure and it's been wonderful interacting with you pre this recording and excited for our chat.

Carl: 1:00

I am excited as well. I've never had a father of podcasting on my podcast, so I feel like I should be rolling out a red carpet or something or setting a special spot at the table for you, just based on the fact that you're here and you have so many great things that you've done in the podcasting space. Congratulations on everything that you've done, uh, and it's been a journey, I'm sure, but let's talk about that. Let's talk about how you got on this podcasting bandwagon. What led you here, uh?

Gautam: 1:32

no, I think that's, uh, it's. It's a really great question to start off with and it's ironic. I'm very lucky that uh, folks consider me worthy of that title, especially considering that I'm not a father of a human being yet myself. Um, so it makes me blush, um, and uh, I mean this is specifically for the indian market. I consistently, um, you know, sort of tip my hat and you know, bow down in front of the folks from, you know, the west that started the medium and have devoted the last 20-25 years to it. The medium is still a lot younger in a market like India. We've been in the space for about 10 years. The journey over the last decade has been quite exciting because it's basically been a series of very fortunate events.

Gautam: 2:27

I had a very different career trajectory in mind, no plans growing up to be in the podcasting space. Ironically enough, I had never heard the word podcast Me along with the other billion Indians, ever-growing number of us, so we didn't grow up with the nomenclature whatsoever. I actually wanted to be a banker and follow in my dad's footsteps, and my dad essentially clearly chose the most fun job title possible because I learned very quickly that it wasn't something that I would be able to survive myself. I studied accordingly, joined, did a small stint at HSBC, then joined Barclays, and I was essentially working at Barclays in my early twenties and the job was insanely boring. I had to spend about 10 to 12 hours on a daily basis just on my own, and my job required me to do a lot of research and risk analysis. So it's even more boring than it sounds. So I needed to make my workday a little bit more fun. So I needed to make my workday a little bit more fun. And, to add insult to injury, what the bank had done is they had put up firewalls so I couldn't access any platform for consumption that I would normally access. So I couldn't go to Facebook, I couldn't go to YouTube, I couldn't go to you even a reddit.

Gautam: 4:06

And uh, I serendipitously, out of desperation, uh, stumbled upon a media format that the bank had overlooked, which was podcasts. Uh, as a way to listen through the day and not go crazy. Um and uh, it was love at first listen for me. I started, you know, very quickly to consume copious amounts of content, started to consume a lot of self-development, self-growth content, as one normally does when they start consuming in this format, but very quickly, the media format began to become very pervasive in my life. I started to consume not only at work, but organically started to consume on my way to work, whilst at work, on my way back from work.

Gautam: 4:48

I was living alone at the time, uh, so when I'd be cooking in the evening, I'd be consuming podcasts, and then at night I'd go to bed listening to podcasts, because I'm one of those nuts that doesn't like sleeping in silence. So I would listen to either asmr or I would listen to shows that were very long shows. So all in all was listening to about 14 hours a day of content in a span of about two, three months. And before this two, three month period, I'd never heard the term and anybody that I was asking about their experience with podcasts had never heard of the term either. So I started to find the space really perplexing, because it was allowing me to consume 14 hours of content a day, but, ironically enough, I had more time to do other stuff, because it was a format that aided with multitasking on the one side, and I just felt like it was giving me back more time than it was taking away from me. Um, so the transaction felt very, you know sort of fair, and you know I really sort of enjoyed it. Uh, the deeper I was going down this rabbit's hole.

Gautam: 5:58

I started to research about the space quite organically, because that's what I was doing at office anyway, and I started to find that this space seemed to have lower barriers of entry in terms of language in comparison to, let's say, the written word on the internet, which is very geared towards English. So audio is more language agnostic because anybody speaking across any different language is on the same playing field, and that works in a country like India which has among the largest language diversity in the world. It's a more literacy agnostic media format which basically implied that people who weren't educated, were semi-educated or very educated could enter this space rather easily. And it was capital agnostic because it wasn't that expensive to start you didn't even need a mic really and it wasn't that expensive to consume either. So it consumed less data and you could consume in patchy internet connectivity areas across the country.

Gautam: 7:04

So I had all of these different variables floating around in my mind and me being the guinea pig who was finding the joy and use case of it myself. So I couldn't understand why the media format wasn't a bigger deal and I started to become a little obsessed with trying to understand why that was. I realized that the only way to really figure this out was to understand it from the inside of the industry rather than from the outside looking in. So I was very lucky. I have a very supportive family.

Gautam: 7:41

I took a bold move and quit the bank and set up my first office uh, in a balcony, uh, at my grandparents house very startup-esque fashion, right, uh, where I put post-it, notes and etc. Etc all the natural tropes that one normally does when they're setting up a company and don't know anything about what they're doing. I didn't have a technology background and I started to basically understand, uh, this space and speak to people outside of the country and in allied countries, because there was no podcasting in the india market. Uh, we hosted the first podcast event, um, about eight years ago, and the first podcast event was four people sitting around a table having beer and essentially talking about whether the podcasting movement will ever take place in a market like India. And from there, to see where it's sort of come to today, where India is the third largest market for podcasts globally, is phenomenal, because I can't imagine that so much has happened.

Carl: 8:52

So I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you right there because there's a few things I want to unpack before we carry on the conversation. Plus, I need to jump in here somewhere. So you're sitting around that table with a bunch of other people having some pints. There's four of you podcasting is. It really doesn't exist in the sense that people can consume it, but it's. It's not like it's a vibrant, it's not even a market right, and you're basically paving the way, or starting to lay the groundwork, for where things are going to where they are today. We'll get to that momentarily. What was it about the medium that really excited you, that got you thinking that okay, yes, this is something that can explode, even though it hadn't exploded yet in India? What was it about it that made you go? This is going to be hot. Somebody just needs to hit the go button.

Gautam: 9:59

It was just copious amounts of data. So on the one side, we saw basically that it was more language literacy and capital agnostic, which is what we've discussed. But then I also saw variables that made podcasting do well in the globe. So where, where all? So what all made podcasting do well?

Gautam: 10:17

Um, wherever commuting time was high, podcasting did well. Um, and this was across the world. And then you correlated it to, uh, the average amount of time people were commuting in india, and it was the second highest on earth. Um, so I said, okay, cool, check there. Then the second uh variable was whenever people spent a large amount of time at home, podcasting did well. So then I went back and saw, okay, where is india on this chart? And it basically said india's the third highest in terms of amount of time that people spend on average at home. So I said, okay, that's phenomenal. Wherever large amount of languages are spoken, podcasting does well. Wherever data is cheap, podcasting does well.

Gautam: 10:57

I was literally looking at all of these different things, and then I was looking at the fact that India's got the cheapest data on earth. India has a very large number of languages, and so it was just a melting pot of variables on one side with a media format that had not taken off yet, um, and a rich oral history in terms of like consumption, because we normally have consumed stories as well as consumed, um, you know, religious, etc. As a large populace in oral format. So you already have a pre existing behavior pattern. You just have not had a penetration of this new nomenclature which is called a podcast, right? So, interestingly enough, I felt in my bones that it was just a matter of time before it would, it would take off, and I knew that it was just a matter of time before it would take off, and I knew that there were just a couple of things that were stopping it from doing so.

Carl: 11:51

What were those things that were stopping it from taking off? What was the barrier?

Gautam: 11:56

So first one is the name. So the word podcast is a derivative of the word iPod and broadcast right Merged together.

Carl: 12:04

Yeah.

Gautam: 12:05

Now in India for the Merged together, yeah, right Now in India for the West. That's phenomenal because everybody correlates iPod with Apple products and everybody uses Apple products, so it feels ubiquitous and feels wonderful. In the India market, apple's penetration was like 3% and people correlated Apple with expensive things and people correlated apple with expensive things. So anything that came as a derivative of the word apple, or their podcasts or ipods, felt like it was meant for a very specific demographic of society. So people automatically believed that it wasn't a media format for them. It was meant for the very wealthy. Uh.

Gautam: 12:44

So there was that one problem statement, which was with the nomenclature. So you had people consuming non-music audio content, but they would refuse to call it a podcast. Then the second thing, uh, which was a major problem statement, was nobody understood how the technology worked. Syndicated feeds, rss's, what are pod catchers? Um, how does this entire story play out? Nobody had any idea. So even if people had intent to be storytellers and not be visual storytellers, they didn't know how to satiate that intent. So either they would let go of that intent or they would, you know, begrudgingly become youtube creators.

Carl: 13:24

So problems like this, essentially major issues but you're all consuming content 14 hours a day. Um, so it's clear that it was there. It was. It was clear that it existed, but what I'm hearing, though, is there wasn't anybody taking the next step and creating content. Is that what I'm? What I'm hearing, though, is there wasn't anybody taking the next step and creating content. Is that what I'm understanding there?

Gautam: 14:00

were a lot of consumers of the box or something like that I forget exactly which podcatcher I downloaded, uh, specifically a podcatcher meant for the android devices.

Gautam: 14:12

Um, and I was listening to westernized content okay so I wasn't listening to indianized content at the time, or eastern content. Um, and there were a few folks that had repurposed radio content and made it into a podcast, but they just put it out into the ether and they didn't know what they were doing with it. Right, to be really honest. So, um, to be really honest, at this point spotify hadn't gotten into podcasting yet. So, um, we like, believed and this is what a naive, I would say, founder does when they're just starting out is you come up with the easiest solution to the problem statement and you're like this is the, this is the solution. So we believe that the problem was that the aggregation of content was not being done appropriately. So, initially, initially, was was actually a podcatcher. So we launched and you still see the remnants of Hubhoppers podcatcher on our application as well as on our website. So we basically spoke to all people that were creating an audio content and folks that had created content across the region, both India as well as the Asian market, and we started to get them and gather their RSSs and create an experience where people could come and consume content that was familiar to them. And it was broken up by language and broken up by genre and broken up by category, and it was the first time that it had been done. So we felt very, you know, wonderful about this major feat that we'd done. In our minds it was a major feat and, interestingly enough, what happened was, carl, that consumption from us launching immediately spiked. So we started to see a lot of people coming and consuming podcasts and we were extremely happy because we believed that our thesis was correct. On the back of this, we believe that, okay, we identified the problem appropriately because on month on month on month, we just started to see more and more and more and more people coming and consuming, and we were the only platform that had podcast content at the time.

Gautam: 16:22

But, interestingly enough, what started to happen was about six months into this journey. Seven months into this journey, a very troubling data point reared its ugly head, which is that consumption kept increasing, but the creators and the content for from this market wasn't increasing at all, and this just went completely against the rules of demand and supply, as per me and my entire team. So we were completely perplexed. We were like, okay, there's finally demand for this media format, indians are consuming this and allied countries are consuming via Hubh opper, but why isn't there more content coming and why aren't creators reaching out to us? Where, where are the creators? Where's the supply if there's now demand?

Gautam: 17:06

So, um, we had another meet, meet up with creators and we spoke to a bunch of creators that, because now podcasting started to, you know, like, become a little bit of a murmur, like people are talking about a little bit, uh, and we basically learned at this point that we had identified a problem, but not the problem, and we didn't identify that the real cancer was the fact that people found the creation process very fragmented, very hurdle ridden and very technical. And suddenly it was like a aha moment for us, because we were like that's why, like, people aren't coming in droves, so somebody, somebody needs to be the, you know, a funnel of creators into the podverse. And if we're not going to do it, we didn't know who was going to do it at the time, because there was no pod tech in the India market. There continues to not be too much pod tech in India market or in surrounding markets. Be too much pod tech in India market or in surrounding markets. So we started to build a hosting platform, little by little, bit by bit, and distribution platform, but with the localized lengths. So we started to basically take into account what these creators found very scary.

Gautam: 18:22

Like, for example, creators didn't like the fragmented nature of podcasting in the west. In the west, uh, because podcasting has been around since like like 2005, 2006, it's very normalized for people to use four or five different platforms. Yeah, like, people are okay using Audacity and then using like or Riverside or Zoom, and then like editing on podcastle or you know, xyz a tool, then going to a Lipsyn or hosting provider of their choice, then going to a Pod track at some point, then going to a Podcon at some point. Podcasting was new enough for india. Now, if you told people, okay, but to become a podcaster now you have to use six tools, it was never going to work okay. So we had to figure out how to build all of that under one roof. Make it localized, make it really easy, have integrations with platforms like canva so that people could make cover art right off the bat within the platform itself, they could record in the platform itself, they could edit in the platform itself. You know there was a community that they could interact with via the platform and yeah so, and then there was the entire ListenSide experience. So, little by little by little, we started to build out all of the ability for you to record, edit, distribute, analyze, create your teams etc. And then listen.

Gautam: 19:51

But there was still one major problem statement, which is that when creators were creating, a podcast is only as good as if people are being able to hear it. So, unfortunately, the only platforms that were ingesting podcasts at the time were platforms like TuneIn no consumption in India. Tunein doesn't exist in India. Stitcher doesn't exist in India. Apple podcast hardly exists in India.

Gautam: 20:21

Spotify was just coming into the fray, so creators were putting their content out, but then like, where would it be consumed? Which became another problem statement for us. So we had to go and take a lot of platforms live with podcasts. So we had to actually take music streaming platforms, in-cab entertainment, in-flight entertainment, news applications, the flipboards of our world. We had to actually take them live with podcasts through APIs. So now what was happening was by doing so, we were finally being able to also get the creator to be able to launch their podcast and, when distributed, reach audiences that were very pertinent to them. And that's when the podcasting wave took off. And then, luckily, spotify etc. Etc. Also started creating ingesting podcasts in a very large way and then a lot of other platforms came about. But we were very lucky because we were the only gateway to reach all of these payload grounds for consumption where there was no other way to reach these platforms where audiences were captive.

Carl: 21:24

You were literally trailblazing, that you literally had to not just solve one problem. You're like, as you're going along you're thinking, okay, well, that's problem solved. Oh wait a minute. It's like you're not just building a house, you have to clear, cut the land. You know there are all kinds of things that you had to do to get to where it is today. You couldn't just do one or two things, you had to literally do it. It was like literally starting from scratch, even though it existed.

Gautam: 21:54

No, I mean, I confess that I represent a team all of whom are smarter than me and all of whom are better than me, so they were the guys doing a lot of this stuff. But, uh, I I actually think it was because it was so purpose-driven, right, because somebody had to do it. We were doing it and we loved it. Because when we went to music platforms for the first time in india and these are music platforms, mind you, because of the population of india, they are large in terms of their numbers, like large, large, very attractive for a western audience or western creator to think about like 50 million monthly active users, 70 million monthly active users when we try to pitch distributing podcasts into them the first couple of meetings that we had, we were actually laughed out of the room because we were actually told on our face, we were told, uh, that this is content that's meant for, like, westernized countries. This is not meant for the india market. It's literally words from a ceo of a music platform to us and told us this type of content would never work in india.

Gautam: 23:04

And our argument was you probably already listened to non-music audio content in your own home or probably when you're driving back home. Why is it that when the word and nomenclature of podcasting gets introduced into the conversation, suddenly everything becomes a problem? So it was really fun, but luckily I am very grateful and glad to see how the communities banded together and how the podcasting market has really sort of taken force and route in India. It's interesting because whilst it follows a lot of similar patterns to Western consumption and creation, there are also a lot of differences, and now we can see that. You know, when you see like millions of streams on a monthly basis, you can actually tell like, oh damn, this is a difference and this is a difference.

Carl: 23:51

So what are some of those differences between the two markets? I know off mic we've talked about that, but what are the differences between the Western market and what's going on in India?

Gautam: 24:02

Yeah, uh, okay. So, and when I say india, I'm I'm basically also speaking about the larger subcontinent. So, like the behavior pattern will be very similar for folks in Sri lanka, folks in Bangladesh, folks in Pakistan folks, and you know so, allied markets, even places as far as Indonesia. Um, consumption time is shorter in the west. It's quite common for people to have two, two hour long podcasts, um, one and a half hour long podcast, one hour long podcast. And this trails back to the fact that you are, folk in the west, had our talk radio, so anybody could start a radio show on a radio channel, and so you had students and colleges etc with radio shows. We uh didn't.

Gautam: 24:53

Uh, the radio in itself was a fairly controlled industry, so you'd only have like 10, 12 radio channels of maybe 15 radio channels across the country, or dominant ones, it wow at the best. So that means that all content, both music and non-music, was shoved into those 15 channels in the hour, in the day. That would basically progress. So programming that would happen for these radio channels was, you know, very cut to cut, right, not a moment to spare, not a second to lose, right. So, um, automatically, you know our not attention span, but our ability to consume audio content was a lot shorter, so we'd consume interspersed um.

Gautam: 25:38

So generally, if you're creating podcast content like true, like og podcast content that's longer than 20-25 minutes unless there's a very large reasoning for why people should listen in for longer normally you'll tend to see your listen through rates drop in a market like India, whereas in the west that's not the case. Number two is if you are like, for example, looking at genres in the west that work in genres in the east that work genres, there are differences. So in the east you look at uh, devotion and religious content that leads the chart by a mile um, after which there's a long gap and then there's self-development, self-growth content, then after that there's true crime and then after that there's self-development, self-growth content, then after that there's true crime and then after that there's romantic stories and storytelling and non-controversial eroticism. In the West it's a little bit different, as far as I understand it.

Carl: 26:41

Yeah, in the West here I'm pretty sure that true crime, if it's not at the top, it's the top two or three categories I think you have sports, comedy and true crime, I think, are the top three, and news fits in there somewhere too, Shows related to news. Those are the top three, and spirituality is further down the list. It's much further down the list actually. I don't know how much further down the list, but it's further down the list actually. I. I don't know how much further down the list, but it's further down the list. So it sounds like there's some some very clear differences. How is the I mean we're eight years ago again those four people sitting around the table. How many people are sitting around the table now? I mean, how many? What's the content creation world like now in india? It sounds like it's exploded.

Gautam: 27:26

Yeah, it definitely has. As I said, India is the third largest, arguably because these numbers are always up and down, but the third largest market for podcast consumption on the planet today. You're looking at for platforms like Amazon Music, India being the second largest platform for consumption globally. Um, you're looking at um. If you're looking at, I would say, the mass exodus of creators coming into podcasting in general, you're seeing, um, probably one of the largest like mass migrations towards podcasting. Uh, over the last uh, although albeit it's a little mix between a vodcast and a podcast, and now you're seeing a fusion of those two words and YouTube podcasts and, like RSS driven podcasts. So can touch upon that also being the future, where you're going to see lines blurring more and more and more full circle to how podcasting used to be, which was video and audio back in the day.

Carl: 28:31

Is the term podcast more mainstream in India now, or is it called something else? I mean, we're calling it a podcast, but or is that still that, thinking that it's? If it's a podcast, it's related to Apple, or is it? Is it just a mainstream term now?

Gautam: 28:47

Completely mainstream. It's completely mainstream. But the only difference between the West and the East over here is that in the West people will understand the word podcast and understand that a podcast is normally casted and broadcasted and will normally have a syndicated feed that's attached to it. Now in India just true to form, um, everything's a podcast. So it's like either we don't adopt it or we everybody adopts it. So now, instagram, like conversations, have become podcasts. Youtube videos have become podcasts. Podcasts are podcasts. So now everything's a podcast. Uh, so it's an umbrella term and it's being used to define a lot of different things. So there's confusion on the other spectrum for the word now. But in a good, I'm happier with this problem than the problem eight years ago, much happier.

Carl: 29:40

Yeah, it's definitely. I feel what you're saying there and I do want to talk about your insights, for what the you know where the the future of podcasting in your estimation is headed. But there is that confusion of you know podcast and everything falls under that. Now, if you're doing a show live on YouTube, it's called a podcast, versus if you're doing a recorded show, audio only, it's also called a podcast and it's you know, I think it's. There's a good and a bad thing. I think with that it's also called a podcast, and I think there's a good and a bad thing. I think with that It'd be like calling a spoon a fork in my brain, but they're two different things. So when you put them together, it's actually called a spork, believe it or not. But to muddy the waters.

Carl: 30:22

And it makes it challenging for people like us who are assisting people with their content, editing and the backend work, because when people come to us and say I'd like to start a podcast, my brain automatically goes to audio right, because I spent 25 years in radio. It's like, oh, you want to start a podcast and it'll be audio right, and they go no, I want video and I want it to be live. And I'm like wait a minute, that's not a podcast, that's something completely different. But let's talk about that a little bit. Let's unbundle that and talk about where you're seeing the, based on trends and what's happening, but where you're seeing the future for this medium which is, you know, here. It's been around 25 years and I always wonder what's going to be next. But where do you see it going?

Gautam: 31:08

globally, or even in your own market. I don't think there's any fighting, uh, the fact that people are using podcast as an umbrella term. Uh, to be really honest, uh, I think you're. You're obviously currently seeing like, like with everything. Right now it's a woke term and, with it being an invoke term, you're seeing a larger number of creators pouring into it, but you'll see people pod fading and you'll see us averaging out to a higher amount of people entering the space, but entering the space both in video and audio. However, what I do believe is right now you're seeing a lot of people um, creating cannibalized content. So what I mean by that is you will see people that are releasing the exact same stuff on like video and audio. Um, and I'm just doing it because they're trying to throw whatever you know and everything at the wall and just figure out what sticks.

Gautam: 32:07

I believe what will happen in the future is it'll become a little bit more nuanced and people will start to treat it more like a funnel. So they'll treat video and the video podcast element of it, um, for what video is great at which is grabbing people's attention? It's much better as a top of funnel medium. You know, um, I'll use things like shorts. I'll use things like reels, uh to to uh create, you know uh lead capture magnets for my podcast. My call to action will be the long form, um. And the long form should be um in in in audio, in my opinion, because that actually is for an entirely different like purpose, where it's going to be more of a connection driver, an engagement driver, a retention driver, a loyalty driver. So it's fine, you may not have everybody converting from the reels that you're taking out, of the short form that you're taking out in immersive content, into the community that you're pulling in the podcast format, but the people that are coming to the podcast are more serious. Your relationship with them will become better. They can become patrons for you. They can become you know sort of. They can become you know sort of folks that you convert to private podcast subscribers.

Gautam: 33:49

And then I believe the funnel will end with people that are smart who will actually utilize the call to action leading to something like a community, so that they don't have further leakage from their podcast uh into nothingness. Uh, because a lot of people have to reacquire listeners each time. They're getting people to listen in to every episode. Uh, the call to action should be a newsletter or the call to action should be a community or some avenue where I can collect all of the people at the bottom of my funnel and this is the best of the best you know and I would treat them appropriately.

Gautam: 34:15

I would give them access to extra episodes. I would give them access to AMAs. I would give them access to potential merch. You know the works and their feedback. I would hold over every other type of feedback because their feedback will be then utilized for how I serve the rest of my family and upwards. So that's what I believe the content structure will change into. So, instead of just creating a replica in audio video format, the way that's currently happening, you're going to start to see shorter at the top, immersively in video. Then you're going to have longer form in like audio or audiogram video and then you're going to have the bottom move to a community or a newsletter or something that builds a relationship for a long time, could potentially lead to clientele etc. Etc. Whatever it may be.

Carl: 35:06

And I think we're seeing that trend now. I think we're seeing the savvy podcasters out there who get it. They realize that it's not just about the show, it's not just about the long form content, it's also not just about creating some reels and such. It's about okay, what's happening after the show? People love that content, they love to know that, okay, Carl's a great Gautam's, a great guy, but what's he doing after the show? What's the community? Or when's the meetup? Or what's happening in the?

Carl: 35:40

I quite often will use this term when I'm chatting with potential clients about wanting to level up their show or wanting to monetize. I'll say, well, create some green room content. It doesn't have to be part of the show, it can be. Okay, we're going to give you a look behind the scenes. Or there's six questions or six topics we didn't cover today. We're going to talk about them in the green room. So that's as you mentioned, that's that bonus content. And then, as you said, there's the merch. That's all of those things that people eat that up. People love that stuff. They love it 100%.

Gautam: 36:16

And they are power users, man, they are power listeners and they'll stick with you through thick and thin.

Carl: 36:24

I believe and there's certainly a lot of thickness there with the industry. I've heard some negative things about the industry, about the podcasting space, a lot of people thinking that it's going to fade away, and I'm thinking I don't think so. I think that it's. I feel like we're just getting started, even though we've been around podcasting has been around for 25 years. I feel like this next phase, whatever it's going to be as you've explained it, it'll be more like a funnel and that, I think, will be exciting, because it's not just something that is niche is the wrong word.

Carl: 36:57

It's not just something that only certain people will consume. It'll be one of those things that people who used to listen to radio, for example. Radio is going through a tough time. I don't know what it's like where you are, but certainly here in the West radio is having a tough time. So a lot of those people who were creating content for radio they're going to be looking at podcasts now and how you bring that content forward and continue to grow your your following and elevate your credibility in that sense too.

Gautam: 37:28

I completely agree, and there's another I like completely align with you on that and I also do, like I'm sure you echo this sentiment as well, because there's a lot of fear around AI, yes, and what AI is going to do for the podcasting space. And the best example that I give I would say again and again is that whenever there's new and emerging technology that comes out, there's always panic that is followed with it. This is not the first time. I think, anecdotally, there was a lot of panic that took place right after the invention of the calculator, because a lot of people believed that they were gonna be out of jobs and, you know, the economy would never be the same. But, at the end of the day, a calculator is only as good as what you put into it, so it's only as good as its input. Number one and number two is it didn't make mathematicians useless, it just made them quicker and more efficient. So, if you look at AI from the lens of it as an efficiency builder and something that can make you, you know, fulfill the more mundane tasks more swiftly so that you can focus on the core and what's important, um, which is the connection, uh, and the content, I believe that ai is going to be a massive boon for the podcasting space, because not everybody knows how to write a very well-crafted section in their show notes or knows how to you know, like highlight the best quotes or etc.

Gautam: 39:06

Etc. But I definitely don't believe that like completely ai driven content. Because people turn to podcasts for what they turn to podcasts, not because of the like the same reasons that people turn to video, they turn to podcasts for the connection. So if you remove the, the connection and the sort of the emotional back and forth between the host and the listener, you're, in essence, removing the very reason why people turn to the medium to begin with. Um, so I don't believe that like that's going to be a major thing for anybody to worry about. However, if somebody is a professional show note creator, that's somebody who I believe may need to, you know, either leverage AI to do it at scale or think about a couple of other things.

Carl: 40:01

We're even seeing, as I said, in our agency, we're even seeing certain tasks become a little bit shorter, which is great, because now we can open up the, you know, add more clients to our roster, because it doesn't take hours upon hours to do transcription.

Carl: 40:20

It can go into an AI tool and get to about 92 to 94% and still be scanned and have it done in a very short period of time, versus having somebody listen to the audio, write down a few words. Listen to the audio, write down a few words, which is the old way that you had to transcribe everything and and that was a job at one point and people were got really good at it. Before I turn you loose, though, I just want to move the needle forward, because I know there's a. There's one more thing I want to give you the opportunity to do Just give a quick overview of um, of what you're doing at Hubhopper. I know you've touched on it a couple of times, but just very quickly. A little bit about Hubhopper and what people can expect when they're going to check it out, because we'll make sure the link is in the show notes.

Gautam: 41:07

Oh no, you so much. So Hubhopper is a hosting and distribution platform, uh, that allows you to basically manage every aspect of your show, uh, so you can uh you can have multiple people with multiple different roles, um, you know participate on the same dashboard. You can manage multiple shows from one dashboard itself. You can distribute to all the different platforms of consumption. You can even create and edit on the platform itself. You can create your embed players, you can create your pod sites, you can create your social collateral um right within the tool itself, um, and you can actually listen to your podcast within Hubhopper itself for the first time.

Gautam: 41:58

We try to make it as simple and easy for anybody, and one of the things that we do is we give access to um certain platforms that would otherwise, you know, not be available to creators, and these are platforms where competition will be a lot lower because they're not too many podcasts in them, but the amount of listeners that exist within them are very high. So if your show sparks a flame or a tinder with these folks, I know that creators are constantly chasing and trying to find where to get their uh organic listenership to go, go up from um. So you know that's a pain point that we, you know, try to uh solve for uh in the organization. Um, uh, so, yeah, that's, that's that's a little bit on us at Hubhopper. Um, always love to get feedback on what we're building out there. Uh, very design focused as an organization. Uh, so would love any suggestions and, uh, thank you so much for letting me uh give an introduction man into Hubhopper.

Carl: 43:06

I will definitely make sure that, uh, and I'm glad you shared that.

Gautam: 43:31

I will definitely make sure that gets shared. I'm glad you shared that. I will definitely make sure that gets shared in the show notes so people can check it out, and all your contact information as well, so people can connect with you. It's been a fantastic conversation. You are a very phenomenal individual. I'm glad we met. I'm glad we chatted today. Gautam Raj Anand has been my guest today.

Gautam: 43:40

Before I let you go though Gautam, I'll give you the final thought. Yeah, so I would say that there are a lot of people we see this. Actually there are a lot of people that are considering starting a podcast, but they are procrastinating the start of it for a various set of reasons. We've actually boiled it down to about four or five reasons. Uh, I would actually, you know, uh, request folks to follow the five second rule, um, or the 20 second rule, rather.

Gautam: 44:02

I mean, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage is what I keep telling myself when I'm standing at a crossroads and I want to do something, because you never know what you essentially speak about could do for somebody in their lives. We've seen some incredible stories coming out of teachers that randomly putting up, let's say, curriculum based content and students that don't have access to great quality education that don't have access to great quality education, education being able to use that as a revision material. And the teacher never believed that when they were creating the podcast, that that would be the end result of their podcast. They just created it because they didn't want to keep repeating the same thing to their students. So you never know where your content is going to go, where your voice is going to go, and whose life it's going to change and what it's going to do. So I would say start your voice does matter, and thank you so much man.

Carl: 44:59

Thank you, Gautam Raj Anand. Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Gautam: 45:03

No, thank you, man. Appreciate the time and it's been an honor. Thank you,

Gautam: 45:08

If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review, and be sure to share it with your friends.

Carl: 45:13

If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email. askcarl@ carlspeaks. ca. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You'll find all those links in the Thanks for listening to the podcast. We'll catch you next time.