HAVING MY SAY - Radio One, the Beautiful Misfits
By the time I joined Radio One, the Indian radio soundscape had turned well and truly vanilla. Safe. Predictable. Mass-produced.
Now before I’m pitchforked, let me add — there were exceptions. There always are. But for the most part, major metros were held captive to a formulaic mix of the Bolly, Tolly, Kolly wood playlists and propped up by chatty, largely vacuous hosts. A sorry situation, fueled by a toxic cocktail of bloated license fees, copyright payouts, high operational costs, and stifling government restrictions on content.
Which is almost funny, considering the uncensored chaos that passes freely on social media. But I digress.
A Boutique Network With Something to Prove
Radio One was a last-ditch effort to pivot a struggling station into a successful concept IP. And the team that took on that challenge deserves to be named.
Led by Tariq Ansari, with Vineet Hukhmani, Ismail Dabhoya, Saurabh Sehgal in the mix — they cooked up a killer proposition. Fully international in tone. A mostly English playlist. Research-heavy content. Progressive voices. A boutique network designed to jangle the airwaves and add some much-needed flavour to the vanilla soundscape.
Differentiation, as it turns out, is survival.
I was handed the evening show — Drive Mumbai — and went on to host it for twelve years.
What an incredible ride.
A-listers from India and around the world. Changemakers and forward thinkers. Indie artists (we especially loved them). Stand-up comedians. LGBTQIA+ voices. Politicians, scientists, environmentalists, opinion-makers. Sports stars, kids, pet parents, adventurers. DEI wasn't a buzzword for us — it was just our DNA, long before it became a hashtag, a mandate, or a slide in a corporate deck.
Radio One was also among the early adopters of genuine social engagement — simulchatting on Twitter, building community on Facebook, and later finding our tribe on Instagram. None of that happens without a great support team working quietly behind the scenes. Particular mentions : Ekta Valecha (aka Lady Princess), Chaitanya, and later, Drishti Ramchandani. Every great radio show has people holding the wheels on. These were some of mine
Then Came 2020. And All the Rules Changed.
There's a real case to be made that commercial broadcast radio was permanently altered by the pandemic. Almost overnight, we were exiled to our bedrooms. Studios were abandoned. Workflows were shattered.
And yet, miraculously, the show did go on!
Necessity, as always, mothered invention and re-invention — along with our very Indian talent for jugalbandi and an almost supernatural ability to fix the world with spit and chewing gum.
In no time, I found myself hosting through a bout of Covid, upskilling my editing chops, turning my living room into a full workspace, getting dangerously clever with my smartphone, and keeping on-air innovation flowing without missing a show.
Then came the moment that crystalized everything.
Near the end of the pandemic, I found myself remotely hosting from Melbourne city. My producer Chaitanya was editing from Kashmir. The finished, packaged show was being loaded in Mumbai by Kobad Mobedjina — Radio One royalty, for the record.
Three people. Three locations. One seamless show.
If you'd suggested that possibility to me when I was physically carrying spool tapes across Mumbai in the 90s, I'd have assumed you were hallucinating. Yet there we were. Making radio. Making it work.
That moment told me, in no uncertain terms, that the landscape of traditional terrestrial radio had changed irrevocably.
Geography had quietly become irrelevant. The studio was no longer a place. It was just workflow — a network of connected minds, scattered across cities and time zones, refusing to go off air.
The future wasn't arriving. It had already arrived.
Why This Matters to You
Radio One taught me that differentiation isn't a luxury. It's survival. The brands, creators, and businesses that thrive are rarely the ones trying hardest to fit in. They're the ones brave enough to stand apart — and disciplined enough to hold that position when the pressure to go vanilla inevitably arrives.
The pandemic reinforced something else entirely. Technology doesn't transform industries overnight. It simply accelerates shifts that were already quietly underway. The winners are almost always the people who were paying attention before everyone else noticed.
And once you've hosted a daily radio show across three cities, two countries, and a global pandemic - geography does not matter.
Next up in Part 5: going national across Delhi and Bengaluru, the 2019 Radio One sell off, and the day I plugged in a few prompts and watched the music industry quietly tilt on its axis.
This is Part 4 of "Having My Say" — six essays tracing three decades across the analog-to-AI frontier of Indian broadcasting. Follow along for the full series, or reach out if you'd like to talk podcasts, sonic branding, or voice AI for your business at Loca Voca Media.
Disclaimer
A Note on Memory (My Memory, that is)
Thirty years is a long time.
Memory has a habit of softening the edges, shuffling the timeline, polishing the occasional anecdote and quietly promoting ordinary conversations into legendary ones.
These essays aren't fiction, nor are they intended to be the definitive history of Indian radio. They're simply my recollection of a wonderfully chaotic career, told from the best seat in the house—the one I happened to occupy.
To every colleague, mentor, producer, engineer, executive, intern, artist, listener and fellow adventurer who shared any part of the ride, thank you. If I've forgotten to mention you, misplaced a date, misspelt a name or remembered things differently, please put it down to the passage of time—not the depth of my appreciation.
If your version of events differs from mine, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Memory is, after all, a wonderfully collaborative thing.
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