Agrahyah Technologies launches Aawaz.com

Agrahyah Technologies announces the launch of aawaz.com, an audio on demand platform with 100% professionally generated content in Indian vernacular languages. With aawaz, 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. Visit http://bit.ly/getaawaz to download or give a missed call to 7776022929

Unlike UGC driven platforms and app, where there can be questionable material such as adult or polarizing content, aawaz is completely living room friendly, suitable for all ages. The entire content is brand safe and has no profanity, no partisan and no political bias.

aawaz.com is built with cutting edge technology stack and hosted on Cloud for a faster and seamless streaming experience for end user. Aawaz.com will also have ML (machine learning) and AI (artificial capabilities) based capabilities to recommend and personalize content based on user’s preferences.

With aawaz.com or the app, people can listen to over 150 hours of audio content which is scripted, recorded, and presented as podcasts and shows. Aawaz also packs in over one thousand text articles. Both audio and text content are spread across multiple genres including entertainment, lifestyle, health, wellbeing, fiction, literature, devotional, comedy and humor, celebrities, career, relationships, and more.

Agrahyah Technologies, was founded with the vision to make technology useful for all, and we do it by creating content ground up that is culturally and contextually relevant to the market we operate in. While Voice is gaining wide spread acceptance, India’s on-demand audio or podcast as an industry is very nascent but promising. Aawaz.com aims to be an early mover and learn and grow with a new generation of audience who are increasingly consuming passive content such as podcast while performing another task like driving or cooking.

Although negligible in comparison to US, where podcasting was a $314 million industry in 2017, or China, where the market size is an estimated $7.3 billion as of 2018, Podcasting in India is gaining steady popularity and looks promising. While select segments, like the ‘Mann ki Baat’ podcast by Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi and access to international podcasts due to iPhone’s pre-installed podcast apps, add to the growth of podcasting in India.

However, the fact that most content, both digital and voice, remains largely skewed to English, is a major factor contributing to the unpopularity of podcasts. English today dominates 51% content on the web worldwide, followed by Russian at a distant second at 7% while Hindi stands at a negligible 0.5%. For a country that has over 400 million Hindi speaking audiences, that’s an abysmally low quantum of content, let alone other 21 official languages of India. Products built by Agrahyah are in aimed to cement the gap.

Factors driving growth of Podcast industry in India:

-          Increased smartphone and internet penetration in India

-          Growing focus on vernacular language content

-          Availability of preinstalled podcast apps with devices like iPhone

-          Ripple effect of the growing podcast market in US, China and South Korea

What this means for Brands?

As per a recent study, internet surfers in vernacular languages have grown from 42 million in 2011 to 234 million in 2016, highlighting that nearly, 70% of Indians consider local language digital content more engaging than English content. By 2021, it is estimated that over 201 million Hindi users, which form 38% of the Indian internet user base, are expected to be online and nearly 90% of them are more likely to respond to a digital advertisement in their local language as compared to English ads.

In line with the above, most brands are waking up to the significance of engaging with consumers in their local language, however, their marketing and brand campaigns are limited to social media and mobile advertising. With rapid rise in regional language internet users, which are poised to drive the next phase of internet adoption in India, emerging platforms like voice are leading the conversation through a plethora of innovative content formats. Podcasts are touted as the next big opportunity for brands, after the voice assistants, which are currently drawing great attention from brands and marketers, with an objective to create more stickiness for the product/offering.

With Aawaz.com, Agrahyah aims to take the lead in offering brands an innovative, ad free, and engaging platform while offering consumers an easy access to rich, culturally relevant content accessible through mobile and web. As a first of its kind platform in Hindi, Aawaz offers both audio content and text content bundled into one, and both of them are created professionally in-house by Agrahyah Technologies. The audio content has scripts written by popular writers and voices of famous RJs. aawaz.com website and app are currently available in Hindi and is aimed at the vast HSM (Hindi Speaking Market) of India.

Speaking about the launch, Sreeraman Thiagarajan, cofounder of Agrahyah Technologies says “We are delighted to be producing content ground up to make it contextually relevant, and useful for people of India. Aawaz.com is our way of making the web useful to people by providing high quality and genuine content created by subject matter experts. While we are striving to make content useful, it is also entertaining.”

With over 150 hours of audio content which is scripted, recorded, and presented as podcasts and shows, Aawaz also packs in over one thousand text articles. Both audio and text content are spread across multiple genres including entertainment, lifestyle, health, wellbeing, fiction, literature, devotional, comedy and humor, celebrities, career, relationships, and more.

Rushabh Vasa, cofounder of Agrahyah Technologies adds “While English podcasts as an industry is in nascent stage in India, vernacular based audio content consumption has always been high in India, albeit in a passive format. Just observe a salon next door, or an average commuter on a public transport, you’ll see them listening and working or earphones plugged while their hands and eyes are busy doing something else.

Aawaz.com packs in many unique shows and podcasts including, Health and wellness chat show, Akbar – Birbal stories, Holy rivers of India, Step by step Yoga guide, Comedy and parody shows, devotional chants such as Hanuman Chalisa, Gayatri Matra, and mythological fables.