Radioing Idlis on the Internet

By Mumbai Correspondent

It all began with an idea of starting a music band. But, when this idea was proved unworthy, a thought of starting an online platform to share and promote talents was conceptualised and eventually, tasty as it may sound, Radio Idli – today’s promising online community radio service for Konkani speaking Saraswat Community – was started in the January of 2007.

‘Couple of weeks, before we formally started out with Radio Idli,’ recalls Nagesh Pai, ‘I had used two freely available technologies – blogger and esnips – towards dedicating a song to my wife in a distinct way on the net. While Blogger helped me to create a blog instantaneously and at zilch cost, enips helped in hosting and streaming audio recordings on the blog. I had stuck on an idea which was too appealing and I couldn’t resist calling Idli House group to my home, including our star singer – Archana Kamath. We then recorded Archana’s voice on my home PC and then put it up on the blog and made it online in no time. Since then the site has been regularly updated with interactive contents and has been growing ever since. Today Radio Idli is known for promoting talents within the community.’

The Idli (talent) meets Sambar (Media)

The site was promoted by the team in a simple, yet smart, way to begin with. Various related community groups on Orkut and elsewhere were mapped and regular updates were sent to them. ‘But’ says Nagesh, ‘the real break through came when the site was noticed by mass Medias like DNA and CNN-IBN’ He also acknowledges the ‘phenomenal support’ offered by community institutions like GSB Sabha Seva Mandal, GSB Sabha Kurla, GSB Sabha Matunga and even to overseas institutions like UAE Amchigele Samaaj.

To identify talents Radio Idli team incessantly communicates with community people in order to convince them to shun shyness and share their talents online. Beginning with group of friends and then through viva-voce the team managed to invite Konkani talents from around the world.

The Idli Making

It’s interesting to note that online model developed for Radio Idli is easily replicable for any group including an ethnic or a religious community. ‘The key to success, however’ says Krishnanand Nayak, ‘is deep passion and commitment towards the community. Besides that knowledge of the community and its cultural heritage is also important.’

Who pays for Idli?

Radio Idli is ‘not-for-profit’ organization. The team is, however, ‘exploring options to monetize the site without distracting from its core objective’. ‘The generated funds,’ Nagesh says, ‘would be utilized towards making the project grow and also to achieve better things.’

Currently all technical costs involved, like domain registration, hosting and maintenance, are borne by Krishnanand Nayak. ‘The radio service also receives’ Krishnanand said to Folks, ‘voluntary donations from generous members of the community, in appreciation of our efforts.’

According to Nagesh ‘We have been running Google Adsense on Radio Idli for a long time, which credits few cents to us when someone clicks it. We are, still, half way from minimum payout needed to receive our first pay check.’ He also adds, proudly, that ‘Radio Idli has also managed to host a music concert, which marked the debut of young singer Balachandra Prabhu in Mumbai. The funds for the same were raised overnight through patrons of Radio Idli spread around the world.’

And Idli Relishes

Radio Idli was recognized as the ‘first community radio’ in Mumbai which used Internet. The concept of using multimedia and online streaming for community purpose was an idea used by very few websites and Radio Idli, they claim, ‘belongs to that league.’

Radio Idli has received encouragement from coveted artist and distinguished personalities including Non-executive Chairman of ICICI Bank, and Director of Infosys Technologies, KV Kamath.