Exclusive | Insightful & inspirational conversation over Chai with Lakshmi

A meaningful conversation over coffee is a style of the west; the desi funda is to have a long talk, professional or personal over chai. So when you have a talk show where the host and the guest inform you and entertain you while sipping hot tea, you definitely need a cuppa for yourself too. And what better reason to toast a chai, then to hear warm heartening stories from the mouth of the fellow Indians who are doing their bit to bring about a change in India in their own little way. We are surely being info-entertained by the new talk show called Chai with Lakshmi.

Chai with Lakshmi was launched in July, 2011 with the aim to create informative and positive content that caters to thinking urban Indians. The name was chosen specifically to create a cultural underpinning. Chai with Lakshmi is a web series, based on the idea of sipping chai in short breaks during the day that invariably leads to a random, often light-hearted, yet insightful conversation. In keeping with this and considering web consumption patterns, each webisode is 7 to 11 minutes long.

Adully got in touch with Lakshmi Rebecca the anchor and the mind behind the show to know more about Chai with Lakshmi, her journey and plans for the future.

Lakshmi began the conversation by briefly explaining the concept of the show and its inception. “Chai with Lakshmi is a first-of-its-kind online talk show for Indians. It is about the ideas that is shaping India for the future, about people who are bringing alive great concepts that we can engage with as citizens, about all the positive little things that are happening in the scores around us that we can participate in and feel inspired by, about topics that are relevant to improving our lives and freeing up our minds. I explore these positive ideas through friendly conversations over Chai and share them in 7- to 11-minute webisodes.

This is a pre-produced show like a talk show on TV. It's currently in its fourth season. And we just released Webisode 02 of Season IV,” Lakshmi said.

She also shared with us her journey so far and the challenges she is constantly up against. Speaking on this Lakshmi said, “The biggest challenge so far has been the waiting game. But because it involved tons of learning, it was a good thing that we had to go through the waiting process. It was a wait to see a sizeable volume of online views month on month.We had to wait because we had not spent anything on advertising. Now, we are clocking anywhere between 1 to 3 lakh views every month and this is important for sustained revenues that can support the show in the long run.”

The milestone according to Lakshmi for the show has been the1.5 million views, two awards and 107 webisodes in less than 20 months.

While talking about the criteria for choosing her interviewees Lakshmi had the following to say, “The talk show is about ideas that are shaping the future of India in a positive way. It is about solutions to issues that are relevant and commonly faced by urban Indians. It is about people who bring about a change and with whom we can associate with. If a topic or person fits with any of these, and we feel we can visually represent the topic well in a 7 to 11 minute time slot, we go ahead.

The sipping of the hot tea continued and so did our conversation. According to Lakshmi the USP of the show is the straight forward and 100% infotainment. No drama. No exaggeration. It is about relevance of an idea to the new India, sensible and positive content, which the viewer can relate to and engage with. It is not about shouting opinions from rooftops, but sharing possibilities and recognizing ideas that are working well. This has gone down well with the audience. And it does not matter at the end of the day whether the interview is of a celeb about his failures or a guy next door and his successes in designing a bamboo bicycle, the focus is on what is relevant in our day to day lives.

Chai with Lakshmi is seasonal in its format and has already had three successful seasons and is going strong with the launch of the fourth one. Lakshmi talked about the reason behind going seasonal as follows, “If I had the bandwidth to continue research, production and publishing week on week 52 weeks a year for 10 to 20 years in a row, I might consider a non-seasonal format. But that might simply mean burn out: creatively and otherwise. A Season-based format gives my team and me a specified time slot to ease off, review what's working and what's not, re-adjust focus and come back and deliver it all the way better than the last time around. If you compare the first webisode from Season IV with an episode from Season III, you'll already see a major difference in video quality and visual treatment. So, I think the breaks work, and they work very well for us as a production house.”

Chai with Lakshmi features a lot of episodes on the idea of going green and Lakshmi says that she likes focusing on topics that offer hope and are relevant to India’s future. In this regard I could cover both waste management at home as well as inclusivity towards transgender. Whilst these issues are very different, they are all relevant, and, identifying ideas that work positively in relation to these issues are important to our future. The underlying thought is conversations that are all about educated and sensible perspectives on what you and I come across every day in our urban lives. Conversations that lead to little insights that you can connect with, conversations with people you can participate with.

On probing more Lakshmi denied that the website has been designed keeping the idea of going green in mind. Her team looked at the brand identity and figured out a design that worked best for their identity.

The conversation moved forward to the future of the show and Lakshmi told us that the genres at present will remain as they are. And being in the infotainment space, they wouldn't want to dilute their content by including entertainment. Tying up with a television channel is a possibility in the future for she would like to take the content across platforms.

The show is limited to the urbane audience and does not have a pan India appeal, Lakshmi defended her stance by saying that the majority of English-speaking internet-video-viewing audience in India is in the urban context and that includes Tier II and III cities. Apart from this, there are all the NRIs across the world. That's a big enough audience to focus on. And it would be simple enough, in future should we want to, to regionalize the content and make it more accessible by way of translations.

Chai with Lakshmi has already won two awards, Manthan in the E-News and Media category, and the Rotary BSE-SME award. Lakshmi seems to now covet the Webby for her show because she likesto dream big and dream better. Adgully says go on girl and dream bigger and bigger and go on charting new territories and conquering new heights.