Hindi podcasts debut with Podbharti launch

Hindi bloggers Debashish Chakrabarty and Shashi Singh have been at it for four years. Seeing blogging in Hindi and other vernacular languages grow from the shadows into the limelight, they realised that this was the right time to launch a Hindi podcast service. So, here it is. Podbharti (www.podbharti.com) podcasts in “pure Hindi”, as they call it. The website has partnered with Indicast, an Indian podcast service in English, to share content.

Both Chakrabarty, a software consultant, and Singh, who works on mobile content, are passionate about the Hindi language, especially its propagation on new media. “Podcasting was a natural extension of our blogging efforts. Our podcasts will be in a radio show format,” says Chakrabarty.

Chakrabarty says that there are about 700 regular Hindi bloggers out there and many times that number of readers. Languages like Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali and Marathi are also proving conducive to blogging, he adds.

He also adds that bandwidth issues in India restrict the length of the podcast to about 15 minutes, as many users still don’t have broadband connections. Apart from downloading podcasts on music devices, users can also hear them online on Podbharti’s website.

Podbharti will follow the Indicast business model and introduce ad spots in about seven or eight months. Advertisers who are in the audio business, such as WorldSpace, are likely to be approached for placing their audio spots, which will run before the podcast begins.

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