The Podcaster is finally here. It has been a long time coming. Hear me out.
To toot or not to toot – our own horn that is – has been a question that has haunted us for a long time. The reason is simply this: we are not new; you have probably already heard us, but just don’t know where.
Our story began almost two decades ago. You probably remember WorldSpace Satellite Radio, don’t you? You know, with AR Rahman, the ads, the billboards, a place where there was “so much to hear”? Yep, that very one. Most of us were colleagues there. We clearly liked each other, or why would we still be working together even after all these years? It was a bond fostered by a shared love of music, information, and most of all, radio. Good old radio, now in podcast flavour. At WorldSpace, we worked on every possible genre of music; wellness and sport; interviewed the who’s who of the entertainment industry; researched, wrote, and spoke, about every artist – old and new – that we believed our listeners ought to know. There are few things in the world more joyous than being able to partake in a shared interest. Writers, researchers, programmers, sound designers, presenters… all coming together to bring you new ideas, link after link. WorldSpace shut down. You know what they say about good deeds…
The team, though, wanted to stay together. We enjoyed what we were doing rather too much. And thus was born Timbre Media. At Timbre, fortuitously enough, the scope of what we could do only expanded. It was here that we could truly come into our own and explore avenues that were hitherto unexplored, and better yet, create whole new avenues that simply did not exist. One such was our homegrown idea of ‘Corporate Radio.’ In 2022, you are probably too used to the idea that brands and companies have their own branded podcasts and internal communication tools to keep employees engaged and informed; to build value for consumers; to establish thought leadership. In 2009, this idea simply did not exist. It was born at Timbre.
Corporate India is an interesting place to understand: multinational companies strive to strike a balance between their Indianness and their global outlook, but the two are not often in sync, and therein lies the rub. And therein lay the challenge for us. We had to Goldilocks our way into being effective and entertaining. ‘How to Talk to a CEO Without Boring Your Audience to Tears?’ could well be a book by Timbre (now in its 13th edition.) Along the way, we also undertook projects that could seem like items on Mad Libs: a classical music app featuring a 120-year-old library; a podcast vertical for one of India’s largest media houses; a business radio station; educational content for competitive exams for one of the biggest ed-tech companies in the world; and nearly everything in between.
All this to say… we’ve been around the block; you’ve probably heard us. But our wares have often borne a different name. And now, we bring them to you as The Podcaster, our newest homegrown idea. Like a certain famous movie line, we are just a set of podcasts, standing in front of an audience, and asking it to love us. For who we are, and what there is, because, there still is… so much to hear.
Rakesh Sharma,VP-Content & Strategy