2023 is an important year for podcasting and Ideabrew Studios-Aditya Kuber Co-founder & CEO

Aditya Kuber Co-founder & CEO of Ideabrew has 23 years of content and media plus previous entrepreneurial experience. Aditya leads overall business strategy, content and growth.He has workey with  BookMyShow, Audioboom, Sportz Interactive, Yahoo!, Times of India, Sakal Media Group.He Led the set-up, launch and scaling of BookMyShow Jukebox - BMS’ music and podcast streaming business. Led a team of over 80 managing content, monetisation and operations.

Ideabrew Studios is a podcast production and full-service audio solutions company. Founded in 2020, it is India’s fastest-growing full-stack podcast business. The network comprises over 300 podcasts across genres and languages. We also collaborate with over 120 creators, including influencers, publishers, radio stations, IPL teams, entertainment companies, and brands, whose content is available on all major audio platforms in India and abroad, reaching over 3 million monthly listeners. With a mission to take audio content to all consumers and make it a preferred medium of entertainment, information, and engagement, they are a force to reckon with in a short span of time.

In a freewheeling chat with Loudest.in,Aditya Kuber. Co-founder & CEO of Ideabrew talks about Podcasts industry.

Tell us about the audio space in India and How it has evolved in recent times?

The audio space has been in a state of explosive growth for the last 2-3 years. With more creators choosing this medium, more audiences have naturally followed and stuck around as they discovered more content. Some of the most important changes have been:

1.The growth of regional creators. Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali are leading the way, but other languages aren’t too far away

2.Alternative to radio. With more vehicles connecting to the internet thanks to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, audiences have the option of streaming music or spoken word. The growth of spoken word consumption during traditional commute times is a great insight for us.

3.Youth flocking to audio. With influential creators and newer formats, the youth is flocking to audio. It also helps that this medium is meant for long form and in-depth content creation.

How has the podcast industry emerged and how has Ideabrew adapted to the growth opportunities?

The podcast industry has kept in-step with tech and digital advancements. The measurability of audio is at par with video and other medium and this offers advertisers and creators a detailed view of their content or ads’ performance. At Ideabrew Studios, we are a full-stack business and offer our creators the ability to monetise through programmatic or direct sales and for advertisers to target audiences at a granular level thanks to our DSP set up. The growth opportunities coming up are in the language space and we are leading this. With over 360 shows under our belt, we have a great insight into what works where and how we can drive the next stage of growth. Our strength lies in the ability to grow podcasts through distribution across 80 platforms globally.

How has digitisation changed the podcasts industry?

Digitisation has brought about democracy in content consumption. Pre-digitisation, one had TV, Radio and even Cassettes/CDs to consume content and music on. This, though, had to be heard in an order or as presented by a TV/Radio station. With digital, you could go straight to your preferred content and skip what doesn’t appeal to you. This helped in surfacing the truly great content faster and the same logic is applying to podcasts as well. Listeners can consume only an episode of what they want or even less!

Everybody has its ups and downs, what challenges has Ideabrew faced in this industry?

One of the biggest challenges we face is the lack of content discoverability across multiple platforms. Since podcasts are a distributed format available on all streaming apps, there is limited discoverability to the content. Podcasts needs a breakthrough moment where a mass hit makes the format interesting to everyone at the same time.

So, what’s the future of the digital audio streaming market?Tell us Ideabrew's upcoming plans?

2023 is a critical year for podcasting and Ideabrew Studios. As more consumers take to audio, it is important they find variety and uniqueness in the content on offer. While the industry has grown significantly over the last two years, there is still more opportunity for growth. On the creator side as well, with more creators seeing monetisation, 2023 should be they year that there is a stabilising effect on the industry overall. For Ideabrew Studios, we expect to continue our growth on the network side. We are targeting a network with 600 shows and the ability to output more than the current 200 hours per month. We are also focused on growing the children’s space and the news space in audio – both underserviced through traditional audio medium.