The Indian CEO is getting a new office — the podcast studio. Founders and corporate heads are increasingly moving from being interviewed to hosting their own, turning the format into another channel for thought leadership, stakeholder engagement and personal brand building.
Nikhil Kamath’s WTF, launched in early 2023, is a popular example. The Zerodha co-founder has built more than 2.3 million YouTube subscribers and over 1,500 videos, hosting Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, Biocon executive chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CRED founder Kunal Shah and OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal, among many others. The tone of his show feels like a living-room chat, pivoting from light banter to life philosophies or abstract macro trends. Reddit users say as he is already a billionaire, the non-monetised vibe feels like genuine peer-to-peer learning rather than a promotional hustle. “We never started the podcast with the intent of making money,” said Kamath in one of his podcasts.
Snapdeal CEO Achint Setia’s Gully to Glory takes him to manufacturing hubs across Tier 2 and Tier 3 India, where he meets MSME founders, sellers and regional entrepreneurs to understand how their businesses are built and scaled.
Setia said the show was not conceived as a branding exercise. “We wanted to bring the inspiring journeys of MSME founders and sellers into the spotlight and accessible to aspiring entrepreneurs across India,” he said. The conversations have also become a way for Snapdeal to listen to its seller ecosystem, giving the company a closer view of challenges around technology adoption, operations and growth. “For us, the podcast is as much about listening as it is about storytelling,” added Setia.
He sees the format as particularly useful for executives because it allows conversations to move beyond corporate soundbites. “Long-form podcasts allow for depth and context that are difficult to achieve through short interviews or social media. They create space for honest conversations about decisions, failures and the ideas that shape businesses,” said Setia.
Rajeev Singh, managing director of BenQ India and South Asia, hosts Unpixelated, which brings technology leaders together with doctors, educators and conservationists to explore the intersection between technology and their work. “It was less about following a trend and more about wanting a format that could hold a longer thought,” said Singh.
The podcast has an average viewership above 100,000 per episode. Singh said the more valuable returns, however, are not necessarily visible in the analytics, but in the partners referring to episodes in business meetings and industry peers reaching out after hearing guests. “That is a different kind of return, one that builds alongside the reach rather than instead of it,” he felt.
For Singh, the appeal of a CEO-hosted podcast is also the control it offers. “Advertising tells people what to think about a brand. A media interview lets a leader respond to someone else’s questions within someone else’s format. A podcast is a format where an executive gets to set the terms of the conversation and still be seen thinking in real time, including the pauses, the disagreements, the moments where an answer is not fully formed yet.”
At Avaali Solutions, founder-CEO Srividya Kannan hosts Bottom Line on AI focusing on what happens when enterprises actually deploy artificial intelligence rather than simply discussing its potential. “There is an enormous amount of content about AI’s potential — very little about what actually happens when enterprises try to deploy it,” said Kannan.
Her guests include CFOs, CIOs and business leaders discussing the trade-offs, failures and groundwork behind enterprise AI projects. Kannan is cautious about claiming direct commercial returns. “I would be cautious about attributing direct pipeline numbers to the podcast at this stage,” said Kannan, feeling that the show has changed the quality of conversations with enterprise executives. One episode featured Tata Play’s Sambasivam Ganesan discussing machine learning-led fraud detection that saved 60% in costs, and employee engagement rising from 52% to 91%. “The weight of that is fundamentally different from a case study PDF,” she added.
There is already a large ecosystem of CEOs who have chosen the other side of the microphone. Marico founder Harsh Mariwala and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy have appeared on business podcasts, including in The Ranveer Show by Ranveer Allahbadia. The scale of the creator-led business podcast market has helped make this possible. Raj Shamani’s Figuring Out has 18.6 million subscribers, 2.27 billion cumulative views and more than 2,500 uploads, with guests including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Zepto co-founder Aadit Palicha, boAt co-founder Aman Gupta and Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal.
Its global counterpart, Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO has around 18.8 million YouTube subscribers and 1.65 billion views from roughly 850 videos. These shows have demonstrated that audiences will spend time with conversations about companies, careers and ideas when a big personality is added to the mix.
But the CEO-hosted format has a problem of its own where authenticity can become a performance as there is a risk of cliched leadership lessons, polished anecdotes and carefully managed vulnerability being repeated across shows. Kannan of Avaali Solutions believes audiences notice. “If a CEO launches one purely as a branding exercise with scripted conversations and safe questions, audiences see through it very quickly. The medium only works if the conversations are real,” she said.
The format is also increasingly video-first. While episodes continue to be distributed through audio platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts, YouTube has become a major destination for video podcasts, while clips can be re-purposed across social media, such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
The phenomenon is also no longer confined to business. Former US president Barack Obama is set to host A Great Book with Barack Obama, a six-episode podcast launching on September 24.
The broader market is expanding rapidly. In 2025, YouTube reported reaching 1 billion monthly viewers globally for podcast and vodcast content. A Deloitte India report estimates that India’s market could grow from $969 million in 2024 to $4.5 billion by 2030. The audience has already doubled to more than 200 million, from around 100 million in 2024. Looking ahead, the report expects the niche creators, particularly in business, education, finance and lifestyle, outpacing short-form social content, driven by stronger audience trust and deeper engagement.