India is a nation that has had an age-old connection with storytelling – be it in the form of fiction, interviews, or people sharing their personal experiences. The country today has emerged as the third-largest podcast listening market in the world, after China and the US. Recently, social media giant Facebook has rolled out the podcast feature as well.
Amid this growing appetite for podcasts in the audio entertainment space, Hubhopper Studio, India’s leading platform for podcasters to host, create and distribute content, intends to onboard close to 60% of podcasters in the Indian podcasting space in a span of 12 to 18 months. Half a decade-old platform, Hubhopper currently hosts 6000+creators across 15 regional languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam and more.
The onboarding process will target podcasters between the age group of 18-35, hailing from different parts of the country, primarily from metropolitan cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. The platform will also focus on creators from various spaces such as RJ’s, voice-over artists, YouTubers, bloggers, content creators producing content across various genres such as storytelling, motivation, business, motivation, horror, true crime and more.
Hubhopper studio is trusted by over 50 partners on the content and distribution side such as Spotify, Gaana, Wynk Music, AajTak, India Today, Juggernaut Books, HT Media, Amazon Music, Karbonn, Indus OS, Hungama Music and many more for their podcasting requirements.
Commenting on the growth plans, Gautam Raj Anand, Founder and CEO of Hubhopper Studio, said, “The last few years have changed the way people look at podcasting. From only resonating with the minds of intellectuals to now being valued and appreciated by the common man, the art of storytelling has come a long way and penetrated deeper into the Indian entertainment market. We, as a podcasting platform, have seen a huge rise in listenership, showcasing the love for podcasters. We want to continue this support by adding more podcasters to our platform and offering a rich genre of audio content to our listeners”.
Hubhopper Studio aims to make podcast creation as seamless and accessible as possible, and alongside is also building monetization solutions for creators. The platform is equipped with useful tools such as audiogram creator, editor, cover art designer along with new features such as text formatting and deeper data analytics to make creation a seamless experience for podcasters.
Hubhopper has raised an undisclosed amount from Hindustan Media Ventures, With this investment, Hindustan Media Ventures buys a minority stake as part of strategic investment in the podcast platform. Prior to this, the company had raised rounds from ITI Growth Opportunities Fund Unit-E ventures and other angel investors.
