About Tech, Finance, and Economics. Making it simple & surprising with fun and interesting insights. Funtech

About the 3 Techies

Sheetal - Spends most of her time in research and marketing. She is a seasoned strategist and communications professional with over 25 years of experience in research, advertising, retail, marketing, and branding. She co-founded Word Hatter, a strategic content company, and Unpac Research, a boutique research company.

Nilesh - Over two decades, launched products like mobile POS - payPLUS and redesigned India’s largest coalition loyalty network - PAYBACK. In 2018, started work on an idea to address the shortcomings of blockchain protocols. 4 years and 11 international patents later, his team has designed and built the Archethic public blockchain for mass adoption.

Samiran - Over the last 28 years, he has held leadership roles at McKinsey, Microsoft, Dun & Bradstreet, IBM, and TCS. He is a recognised thought leader in the AI/Blockchain space, a TEDx speaker and a member of the Forbes Tech Council. Currently a Senior Advisor/Board Member with several start-ups in the fintech, artificial intelligence, and blockchain space.

Tech is not Tough. You can even laugh about it.

3 Techies Banter is a technology podcast for non-techies (and techies) - anyone with a sense of humour and an inclination to want to discover new things in the tech world. The three “techies” come from diverse backgrounds. We have worked across multiple industries, from technology to research to content and education. Yet, we are united in our desire to make technology a topic of drawing-room conversation where everyone can have a viewpoint-diverse yet founded on facts.

We have two kinds of listeners. One is our peers, who want to find out what is happening in the tech world. These are CIOs/CTOs and CXOs. The other is a younger group who want access to quick 101s on varied topics within a short period. The second is a larger group of consumers, especially given the podcast format.
 

As students, we knew that the authors who understood the subject best wrote textbooks in the most straightforward language. And "experts" who claimed to know everything managed to confuse all students with their supposed intelligent writings.

The central challenge associated with tech-related conversations is that many people find technology challenging to understand and decode - even frightful. It was almost always of tech, for tech, by tech. As a result, most people have little interest in technology unless it directly impacts their daily lives.

Coming from the world of technology and research, we realise technology is an odd discipline. It can potentially impact the lives of people as individuals and as a society significantly. Yet, so many people know so little about it or expect so much from it - both are equally dangerous.

So we had some simple objectives when we started this podcast

1. Become the 'FunTech' podcast of choice for all - entertain and educate
2. Encourage healthy debate and voice opinions on the future of tech
3. Marry tech, with the economics and finance behind the tech
4. Have lots of fun and laughs along the way

The podcast kicked off sometime in December 2021 and should be closing Season 2 by the end of September 2022. 3TB has been on India's top trending podcast list several times. It has featured as a top podcast on Amazon Prime Music, Wynk, Hungama and Jio Saavn. The Trends 2022 episode even made it to one of the best episodes of the week list on Spotify. It is available on all major platforms.

Think of our podcast as Neo choosing between taking a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill represents a continuing belief that technology is complicated and meant for geeky-looking people hunched over multiple monitors. And the red pill, as in "The Matrix", represents the liberating feeling that it's not a big deal; the red pill is 3TB.
 

We have finished one season and are coming to the end of the second. During the season, we drop a new episode at the end of the week (for no particular reason). The average duration of each podcast is 40-45 mins, with some outliers.

It takes us 24 person-hours to produce a single episode starting from deciding the topic, the research, the prep, the recording, the post-prod, the artwork, the description and finally, the distribution. The actual recording time for a single episode gets done within 90 mins.

It is a passion project that started during the pandemic and has now become a force of habit. It feeds on itself. We love doing it and enjoy talking with each other - which comes through in the show.

The show is self-funded as of now. However, we are open to sponsorships which do not require us to sacrifice creative freedom.
 

We do not have any sponsors as of now. We are entirely self-funded and bootstrapped. But we are open to any funding and sponsorship from brands and well-wishers.

Initial attempts to raise some funding were not very successful. So we decided to support the podcast ourselves, which was a very wise decision in hindsight. 3TB has evolved with every episode, and we experimented with the content and the format without fear or unnecessary oversight.

We have no revenue, only goodwill and a decent fan following 🤘🏼.

The podcast gets between 2500-3000 downloads per month depending on the topics covered and the guest featured. These numbers should pick up now - we see an upward trend as the podcast catches on and we get repeat listeners.

All of us benefited immensely from the podcast. The usual stuff is about keeping you connected with tech and forcing a discipline to read and analyse topics. More subtle is that now we all have some body of work for others to see and judge. It is one thing to say that you know something; it is quite another to put something out there for public scrutiny. This is what is helping each of us individually and collectively. The podcast is our live calling card and brochure.

And then there are the additional LinkedIn connect requests and other "celebrity" pressures. Just Kidding 😇.
 

We have slowly graduated from talking into the laptop to simple headphones to Rode lapel mics, AKG Lyra (an overkill but got it at a great price 😁), Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones (not so fabulous for video - looks like another head).

Sometimes, we use BlueTooth in-ear headphones for audio output and mics for input. A good thumb rule is always to have those two separated. Wireless connection and internet speeds have been challenging, mainly since we do not record in a studio - it is all remote. So, we have now moved to a wired CAT6 cable connection to the laptop for high-speed throughput - low tech is reliable tech.

Riverside.FM is our tool of choice for recording. It has worked well for us so far. But, of course, you can always read their blogs for tips and tricks.

Preparation for each podcast starts with knowing the broad themes we want to cover and then diving into more detailed info around the specific topic. The key is to deconstruct the topic into its basics and then decide on the best approach to explain a complex topic - via paradoxes, analogies, anecdotes or just plain speak.

Since the podcast is an offspring of the pandemic, we are using Riverside.FM for all interviews and recordings. Guests have also sent in responses to questions via audio or video files which also works.

Guests so far have mostly been people we know personally or have interacted with professionally. People are not flocking to be interviewed; neither do we have a long waiting list. Based on a topic, we decide whether having a guest adds more weight to the subject or not.
 

Most of our listeners reach us through Wynk Music (57%), followed by Spotify. Currently, a large chunk of our listeners are from India (not surprising) though we have been on all continents as per the consumption data, which includes one person in the Maldives and one in Mauritius 😎.

LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups are the most useful, followed by Facebook. We also use a lot of WhatsApp groups to circulate our episodes.

We have just started on our Instagram and YouTube journey and are still coming to terms with what should be a Post, what should be a Story and what should be a Reel or YT Shorts.
 

We knew a few things were essential but only realised how important they were once we started our podcast journey.

1. Discipline and Regularity - whatever you do, you need to keep a routine with the podcast. You will lose the audience if you do not create a habit-forming pattern amongst listeners. The evening of "x" of the week every week or every 15 days - whatever you decide, you need to be able to release your content to the world.
2. Duration - This is our learning - so apply it as you must. People tend to listen to podcasts while walking or running, or driving. So your episode needs to finish within that one activity they undertake. The audience rarely comes back to listen to an unfinished episode (unless you reveal the secret to eternal youth 😊). So it would help if you found the optimum duration that works best for your audience.
3. Content - If your content is crappy, then you are toast. Content is the very core of your offering. What is your podcast about, and why are you the best person to deliver it. People rarely give a podcast a second chance. Poor content = Bye Bye Podcast.
4. Quality of Output - And finally, production quality. Podcasting is an audio medium. You cannot dazzle people with visual animation and immersive experiences. It is all about the quality of the production, the sound engineering, the recording quality, the background score, the intro, and the outro. You need to get this right.

Ours has been an OJT learning experience. We just improvised and constantly changed our approach as we went along. We experimented with topics and formats, artwork and music, audiograms and video for promos. We do not follow a specific playbook for our podcast.

We learned most from listening to great podcasts in our category, which gave us most of our ideas. The ones we love and would wholeheartedly recommend are

• Pivot
• Ezra Klein Show
• a16z
• No Such Thing as a Fish
• ThoughtWorks
• Wired
• No Stupid Questions
• After Hours
• On the Contrary by IDR

There is no shortcut for good content, though 😉
 

We have not yet got down to building a lot of digital properties. However, listeners can find all our podcast episodes at https://bingepods.com/podcast/3-techies-banter-3tb.

3 Techies Banter is currently available on the following platforms

1. JioSaavn
2. Spotify
3. Amazon Prime Music
4. iHeart Radio
5. Gaana
6. Castbox
7. Wynk
8. Hungama
9. Epic ON
10. Apple Podcasts
11. Overcast
12. Podcast addict
13. Player FM
14. Podbean
15. Podcast Republic
16. Castro
17. Deezer
18. Hubhopper
19. Pocket Casts
20. aawaz.com
21. Radio Public
22. Google Podcasts

Planning to get on these,

Globally:

1. Stitcher
2. Amazon Alexa
3. Samsung Podcasts
4. Antenna Pod
5. Acast
6. Roku
7. Winamp
8. BeyondPod
9. Mixer Box
10. Sonos
11. Pandora
12. Anghami
13. Luminary

If you want to know more about us, you can find us here

Nilesh Patankar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nileshpatankar/
Sheetal Choksi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheetalchoksi/
Samiran Ghosh - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samiranbghosh/
Twitter - @samiranghosh
Blog - https://samiranghosh.org/
You can reach us at 3TB@unblox.com. You can also record your feedback on the podcast or a specific episode at https://bingepods.com/3tb-ask-us. We will carry it on a future episode if it is really fun. Maybe even call you as a guest.
Our LinkedIn Showcase Page - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/3-techies-banter/?
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC14GVcHfEdVh2NPqINRiOqQ
Insta - @3techiesbanter