Words worth: India's top five podcasts that you shouldn't miss!

A podcast is an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download to a personal device for easy listening. Streaming applications and podcasting services provide a convenient and integrated way to manage a personal consumption queue across many podcast sources and playback devices.

Sandeep Singh, Co Founder and president, Khabri, says, “Lot of audio worthy content has been delivered via video platforms due to a lack of choice, but audio always has been the primary means of information transfer for ages together, now with the proliferation of pure-play audio platforms consumers are getting what they always wanted, minimum screen engagement and latent content consumption.” The top five podcasts currently in India are:

• KHABRI
  Khabri is a two-way platform which renders immense ease at both creating and consuming the content. The podcast was backed at the very inception stage by the likes of YC, GSF accelerator. Steadily, the makers adapted and tweaked the tech, product and, in turn, delivery, for some of the best matrices in terms of engagement, retention and returning users among the best of audio platforms.
• AAWAZ.COM
  Agrahyah Technologies has launched aawaz.com, an audio on demand platform with professionally generated content in vernacular languages. With this, people can listen to podcasts, chat shows, interviews and also read articles and features. Aawaz.com is currently available in Hindi, and as both website and Android app.
• AUDIOMATIC
  Audiomatic is India’s first podcast network that launched in April, 2015. As of June 2015, the website hosts four programmes, each of which has episodes ranging from 15-20 minutes. The podcasts are either weekly or fortnightly, and offer content in genres such as food, science, culture, current affairs, entertainment and humour.
• HEADFONE
  Headfone specialises in vernacular podcasts, talk shows, short stories, and other forms of audio content. Its podcasts on religion and spirituality, kids and family, news and politics (including the PM’s Mann Ki Baat) are quite popular. Interestingly, Headfone lets users record their own podcasts and publish them on a public profile.
• CASTBOX
  Castbox is an app that distributes free podcasts. As of 2019, it has about one million podcasts available through it, including about fifty million podcast episodes. It also has a premium platform. In June 2019, Castbox integrated with Waze, allowing playback controls to pause, skip, or restart episodes.