Published August 14
Raj Shamani has interviewed everyone from heads of state to Olympic athletes to business tycoons. His podcast, Figuring Out, has grown into one of India’s biggest, with millions of listeners and watchers tuning in to its long-form conversations.
That growth has not come from chasing viral hits. Shamani says the show’s first 50 episodes attracted “almost zero audience” and that its rise has instead been built on years of incremental growth, audience insight and careful attention to what keeps people listening and watching.
Now, as more advertisers turn to creators and podcasts to reach engaged audiences, Shamani argues that brands are asking the wrong question. The value of a podcast partnership, he says, is not simply how many views a creator can deliver, but whether their audience trusts them enough to act on what they recommend.
Shamani spoke with Zac Wang during the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
You started from very little, and now you’re essentially one of the biggest podcasters in the world. Could you take me through that journey?
A lot of people feel like there’s always a point which makes you big and which makes you viral. In my journey, there was no such point.
We started with almost zero audience for the first 50 episodes. And then slowly and gradually we kept increasing. And because we optimize a lot on data, psychology and AI, because of that, we just kept increasing our audience. And even today, every quarter is better than the last quarter. But there has never been a point where we have gone viral or anything like that.
You hear the supposed overnight success stories, but it’s never really like that.
Yeah, we’re heading toward the sixth year now, and in five years, every year we have had one big moment, but 12 midsize moments, which made us big.
How do you structure shows to keep the audience engaged for so long?
It’s about the framing. The whole team and I, we don’t look at it as a podcast or an episode. We look at it like a movie.
Think about how you make a movie. There’s a producer; there’s a director. You’re building the origin of the character. You are giving the background of the people who are the main heroes in your story.
Then you’re pulling the story thread and you’re taking them through the buildup, the structure, then you’re raising a problem, then trying to solve the problem and then showing the realities at the same time. There are so many emotions. We try to package all of that in a podcast. It’s not just two people having a random conversation.
And second, with every guest, I try to steal something that only they know and nobody else does.
There’s a lot of engagement on audio, but advertisers seem to be staying on the sidelines. I know you’ve worked with a lot of big advertisers. Can you tell me about the work that you’ve done, what they’ve seen from the results?
We worked with global tech giant Asus. They wanted to launch their business laptops in India for the first time, and they worked with us. So we were their only creator or podcast that they worked with. They had zero market share when they started working with us, and in six months, they went from zero to 85% market share just by working with us on the podcast.
That is the kind of result and impact that advertisers see, and this is a global tech giant. It’s not some small brand which would see a large market share.
Podcasters are working and giving such good results, but only a few are able to do it. The difference is the few podcasts which are able to give you the good return on investment — does their audience trust them? That’s the most important question.
It’s not about views. It’s not about how many viral moments they’ve catered or curated and how big they are. What matters is, does their audience actually like the journey that the podcaster is on? Do they trust that person? Will they actually trust with their money if this podcaster says something, that is a very important question, and that can only be done when somebody has carefully curated over a long period of time and optimized for values and trust over just views.
What would you say to advertisers that are newer to podcasts?
One of the biggest misconceptions which a lot of advertisers have is, if I will choose this person or this podcaster and I’ll do one podcast, magically, my brand will become really big in one night. It’s not going to be magical. It’s not going to be one podcast or one show and your brand will become this overnight success.
It’s a deeper relationship that you invest in. They need to build this relationship with the audience, podcaster and the brand together. A lot of advertisers are not doing this anymore, but they used to. When they come with a preconceived notion that, hey, this is what you should tell your audience. No, you should not tell us what we should tell our audience. You should tell what your brand is about. And then how is it going to help me and my audience, just tell us that, and let us communicate in a way that is best for our audience.
Don’t shy away from putting in your trust and confidence into the person who has built this audience.
That can be hard, to let go a little bit, for advertisers.
Most of the advertisers who have done this, they realize whenever they have let the podcaster or creator have the control, they have seen better results than when they have had control.
