In Asia, women leverage smart-phones and collaboration to build new media voices
How Nepal’s Boju Bajai and Singapore’s Chief Best Friends podcasts are helping women find their voice, through fun and friendship.
“It all began with bears and whores.” — @bbhrikuti & @itisha on the origins of their rocking feminist podcast, @BojuBajai. 30-odd episodes in, they’ve critiqued the Nepali media, society, & The Nepali Man, including the “Jadyaaha Rastrabaadi” — the drunkard nationalist.
Straight-talking and hard hitting, no filters, no jargon, just like your granny — that’s Nepal’s. Boju Bajai’s with its casual, direct style contrasting to the formality of traditional media. Or the “missing friendship+business and the delightful, messy in-betweens” of Singapore-based Chief Best Friends for women in business,
Both are examples of an Asia-wide trend — women talking to women, leveraging the spread of smart-phones, podcast access and collaboration to build new start-up media voices.
Collaboration is a key strength of women entrepreneurs. While the focus in promoting women’s entrepreneurship has been access to credit/human capital or training, says the Harvard Business Review in October 2019, “…another key factor in the success of these businesses tends to be overlooked: access to networks.”
Supporting women entrepreneurs is good for the world, say the study’s authors Shalini Unnikrishnan and Roy Hanna. “If women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion.”
Where did their ideas come from?
“We are two Nepali feminists in two continents who talk about people, politics, internet, media and everything in between and also end up laughing a lot while talking about these things,” says Bhrikuti Rai who founded the Boju Bajai podcast with poet Itisha Giri in 2016 to confront the toxic Internet culture in Nepal and the often tone deaf coverage of traditional media, one episode at a time, with topics ranging from menstruation, sexual harassment and politics.
The choice of podcasting just happened, say the founders. They didn’t want to do a mere extension of their day jobs using text (Rai) or poetry (Giri). Podcasts seemed obvious, since voice was how they communicated effectively across continents, with both travelling between Nepal, the US and Spain.
The time-shifting inherent in podcast consumption suits their international audience, particularly in the Nepali diaspora. Independent radio in Nepal emerged in the mid-90s as a popular sources of news and current affairs during the civil war between Maoist rebels and the monarchist army. With cheap Chinese transistors freely available, radio news travelled in baskets and fodder bundles, school bags and porter-loads into the high mountains and marshy plains. The flood of cheap smartphones in South Asian markets has turbo-charged the trend.
Singapore-based Niki Torres’ Chief Best Friends podcast started in 2018 with her interest in women-led businesses, recognising that relationships and community building were something that bind women together, including in business, Why podcasts? Because she loved them, consuming up to six or seven a day.
“There are lots of shows on business, mostly with men leading those conversations. When women do lead, it was mostly about a solo leader thing. For me, it boiled down to — what is NOT being talked about in the podcasting world, and what would those listening to podcasts like to hear about.”
Torres was convinced that the product needed to stand out from all the other business podcast shows. “For me the question was — does it impact the business if you’re running it with a friend? It’s very very niche audience. I felt it was what I needed to do, otherwise it would be very vanilla, just like any other business,”
Although there are other shows about women and about business. Torres saw the gap: “Hey! Wait a second — there are more women, but the Asian voice is missing,” So, Torres started one.
The appeal of women in conversation
Boju Bajai’ builds its “guff-gaff (chitchat) and laugh” stand-up comic style on what Rai calls “the personal response” to issues they feel strongly about as Nepali women — whether politics, citizenship (and the discrimination against Nepali women) or the toxic masculinity around them. It highlights what they felt was missing from mainstream Nepali media with its “tone deaf” columns about domestic violence and stereotyped imagery around women’s rights.
In one podcast Boju Bajai’s Musical Break, they tear apart the lyrics of Nepali film songs, many of them inspired by Bollywood’s profitable recipe of sexism and sensationalism. As one listener commented:
“The fun you are having is contagious!”
Community engagement has always been central: “One of our listeners helped come up with our logo from a photo I had taken of two elderly women in a marketplace, and our live event in November was made possible with funds raised from our listeners supporting us through Patreon. Some other listeners have offered to help with future events,” says Rai.
Reaching out to their audience, enabled the podcast to break open the Nepali #metoo storm. As disclosures about sexual predators in the Nepali media, entertainment and arts struggled for space in the mainstream media, Boju Bajai’s call for stories saw several first-hand experiences of sexual harassment. Before long, a major English daily in Kathmandu –where Rai now works– linked with Rai and Giri to amplify these stories.
Boju Bajai is also experimenting with expanding its distribution channels. “We’re moving content to other platforms like video too,” says Rai. Characteristic of women-led ventures, Boju Bajai has relied on networks and collaborations built around an emotional connect. This has helped build their presence on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to steadily build the brand.
Chief Best Friends is also based on women telling their own stories. “Underlying all of it is that relationships matter to women and affects how we perform and advance at work, It’s not bad or good, but it’s a preference” says Torres.
The spotlight on women’s relationships is, for Torres, the crucial differentiator from other shows.
On Season One, Chief Best Friends showcases women founders as role models for younger women starting out and trying to figure out how to go about it. Series Two will explore the themes that underlie the friendship+business dynamic when women set out to do business with friends.
“It was featuring women and I wanted to target women,” says Torres. “So, if it meant calling my show a women’s business podcast, that’s how I would pitch it. I wanted to make sure that my ideal audience -young women in business — knew exactly that my show was for them.
“That’s really the story I’ve been telling people: that I have a podcast and it’s women in business and about our relationships and what happens when women start a business with their friends.”
Turning community conversation into a business
Torres did not start Chief Best Friends with a business model in mind. She didn’t even look for sponsorships, She just plunged in since she was doing podcasts as a side project, while continuing her day job at a start-up.
Moving into podcasts full time would necessarily mean monetisation. Advertising and ticketed events seem the most obvious avenues. But community building and sustaining a business through networks of listeners seems more organic to Torres.
“I am figuring out what would be the best way forward, and exploring with my audience what is the kind of thing they would pay for? Would they want to be part of a community and pay for it? What resources might they be willing to pay for, like courses?
“I am looking at it in a community kind of way. I am primarily catering to a listener who is trying to build a business and wants to know: How do I do this? How do I do this with my best friend? How do I navigate the process? I want to build a resource around people who are listening to my podcasts and offering them support.”
The Boju Bajai founders are also turning to monetisation: “In the beginning, we thought it was something we’d do on the side, but now we’re looking at sustainability and earning revenue.”
Similarly Boju Bajai is also looking to its audience for support. Initially, they prioritised building the audience over sustainability, using personal networks across continents. Now they are looking towards monetisation through crowdfunding on Patreon to raise funds, including to upgrade recording equipment, and through live events.
At their first ticketed live in Kathmandu in October, Boju Bajai spoke about the experience of Nepali women in the online space. “We put the event together with the money we had generated from our listeners through Patreon, and the money we raised from the tickets was the first time we made any money through our podcast. We want to explore this avenue further because we see immense potential for Boju Bajai live events,” says Rai, heady with the success of a sold-out show.
And more followed, with the Kathmandu-based organisation Counter Culture Nepal collaborating on another live event at a college venue. Here, they talked about consent and courtship as portrayed in popular culture, a theme they’ve explored in their podcasts.
“We also want to hold master classes in making podcasts,” says Rai, who sees the potential of skill-sharing in generating revenue.
For Rai, Giri and Torres, earning through what they love doing is a win-win. In the end, it’s about sustaining networks and building on what works for women: fun and friendships.
Laxmi Murthy is a journalist, writer and researcher based in Bengaluru. Additional research for this story by Jacqui Park.
This report was written for the December 2019 issue of The Story, a fortnightly newsletter on reinventing journalism in the Asia Pacific, published by Jacqui Park. You can sign up for the newsletter here: http://bit.ly/TheStory-AsiaPacific
