AIR’s streaming services launched on Amazon Alexa

All India Radio has launched its streaming services on e-commerce platform, Amazon’s voice-controlled smart speakers in a bid to expand its global footprint. Vividh Bharati and 14 other regional language streaming services of All India Radio will be streamed on Amazon Alexa. Archival assets of All India Radio will be made available in Amazon Alexa in near future. All India Radio will get an additional platform for global and domestic audiences and will cover all the shadow areas of the terrestrial broadcasting in the regional, headquarters, and metro cities in particular. Alexa would supplement All India Radio’s website and app.

Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore (Retd.), Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Information & Broadcasting and Sports & Youth Affairs; A Surya Prakash, Chairman, Prasar Bharati; Dr Shashi Shekhar Vempati, CEO, Prasar Bharati; Rajiv Sawhney, Principal Tech Business Development, Amazon Alexa (Asia); and other senior officials of the ministry were present at the event.

Speaking on the occasion, the minister said that launching of All India Radio’s streaming services on Amazon’s Alexa platform would be a synergy of old and modern forms of communication and this initiative would benefit the Indian diaspora around the world. Surya Prakash added that the playlist of archival assets of All India Radio would also be made available on the Alexa platform in the future. Rajiv Sawhney observed that voice is the future of communication with the devices around us. Voice is everywhere and already 390 million people around the world are using voice-based communication and this would almost triple to 1.83 billion people in the next 3 years.