Can marketers now see radio as more than a second fiddle to television?

Given the size and diversity of the country, radio as a medium is still grossly underutilised

It was in 1923 that Radio Club of Bombay first began broadcasting over the air waves. A generation of Indians still fondly recollects listening to Ameen Sayani’s voice on Binaca Geet Mala, first broadcast through Radio Ceylon back in 1952. Before television sets became ubiquitous, radio was a part and parcel of every Indian’s life.

The real boom in the Indian radio industry, however, began only in 1999 when the government decided to let private players enter the FM radio-broadcasting space. Over the 18 years since, faint murmurs of a brewing radio upsurge are often heard during media planning sessions across