MUMBAI, INDIA — On 12 January, National Youth Day, 2022 – Yuvaa, India’s first Gen-Z driven youth media and insights organisation launches its first original podcast, “Main Hoon Yuvaa.” Main Hoon Yuvaa is a weekly podcast that listens to the hopes, dreams, aspirations, perspectives, opinions, struggles and stories of India’s Gen Z Yuvaa, who form the largest population of youth in the world.
Despite occupying 27% of India’s population, the representation of Indian GenZ’s aspirations, interests and voices remains low in decision-making processes across all national and state governments. To address this gap, Main Hoon Yuvaa podcast provides a platform for young people from diverse backgrounds to share their stories and voice their opinions on the urgent issues that affect the youth like mental health, feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights, Islamophobia, caste-discrimination, body shaming, and many more. Through an interactive format, the podcast understands the stories and ideas of GenZ and amplifies them across Yuvaa’s community of over 4 lakh users across Instagram and Youtube.
Hosted by Nikhil Taneja, a Mumbai-based writer, producer, storyteller, teacher and mental health advocate, the podcast tries to make young people feel less alone by making them feel more heard, seen and represented. The weekly podcast will have guests from all backgrounds, communities, regions, castes, and economic backgrounds, to truly be representative of India’s Gen Z ‘Yuvaa’ and aim to build community and empathy among young listeners.
Speaking on the launch of the podcast, Nikhil Taneja, Co-Founder and CEO, Yuvaa said, “In a world where every young person has something to say, Yuvaa was started to be a platform that listens to their voices and stories. For the last three years, through our various online and offline initiatives, Yuvaa has created several safe spaces for young people to express themselves without judgement. The podcast, Main Hoon Yuvaa, is one more step in that direction of amplifying the voices of India’s incredible youth, who need to be given the respect of being heard.”
Yuvaa’s constant endeavour has been to bring the voices of the youth to the forefront by leveraging the power of storytelling and entertainment. The Main Hoon Yuvaa podcast is an effort by the company to engage with and empower young Indians by giving a platform to their stories, so policy makers, non-profits and even brands can understand them better.
Yuvaa has earlier made 1000+ pieces of socially conscious content across various digital platforms and has a campus communities of 10,000+ students in over 50+ cities, working worked with the likes of Instagram India, Amazon Prime Video, UNICEF India, IBM, Tinder India and many more brands and impact organisations, on content, research, insight and online & offline campus activations.
The three pilot episodes, featuring 18-year-old Anjali Surana (menstrual hygiene activist), 19-year-old Agasthya Shah (content creator), and pandemic hero Harteerath Singh (Community Director at Hemkunt Foundation), are already live and can be heard on all streaming platforms including Spotify, Jio Saavn, Amazon and Apple Podcasts. The upcoming guests include journalist Fatima Khan, entrepreneur Navya Nanda and anti-caste activist Srishty Ranjan.
