MUMBAI: They say that the era of indie music is slowly making a strong presence in the world of Indian music today. In the crowd of music labels, Bollywood films and web-series makers, who are supporting indie artists, radio is nowhere behind. 93.5 RED FM has launched a new show, Indie Hai Hum to bring independent artists across the country to the forefront. The show will be hosted popular indie artist Darshan Raval, who is debuting as a RJ with this show.

The launch event, which was held, yesterday, at the Hard Rock Café in Mumbai was graced by RED FM COO and director Nisha Narayanan, Darshan Raval, Jubin Nautiyal, Neha Bhasin, Kam Bhari, Raja Kumari etc and RED FM RJs including Malishka, RJ Rishi Kapoor etc.

Speaking on the launch, exclusively with Radioandmusic, RED FM COO Nisha Narayanan said, “It’s a humble start and a long journey for us. We do think that from a Bollywood driven economy, it is going to move towards an artist driven industry and we want to be a part of it.”

“We are confident that Indie Hain Hum, our first show under RED Indies will mark the transformation of the radio and music industry to help grow the community of Indie artists,” she further added.

RJ Darshan Raval also said, “I am looking forward to reach more people. Our focus is to celebrate independent artists and their music through my radio show, Indie Hai Hum.”

RED FM’s star Malishka, who was speaking at the launch, told media, “I am very proud to be a part of RED FM because when you are in the position of power and can help in bringing up whoever it might be especially artists, you should be able to do it. We have been working on a great new show, Indie Hai Hum.”

During a chat with the media, Darshan also revealed that it was his dream to say on-air, 'Hi I am Darshan Raval.’ He also informed that the show is going to be a heart-to-heart talk between two independent artists. He also revealed names of various genres including Sufi music, classical rock, ballet, romantic etc., which will be featured on the show, where he will discuss about their music, stories and might even have collaborations with them.

On the various artists that will be featured on Indie Hai Hum, Narayanan told RnM, “It’s about discovering great music irrespective of if the artists is a known artist or is an upcoming artist. To me, all are important as long as they are producing great music.”

Further, the artists featuring on Indie Hai Hum are going to be PAN India.

On this, Narayanan told media, “We are not restricting ourselves only to Hindi. There is some excellent music being created whether it is North-East or South India or any part of the country. We hope to be language and platform agnostic (digital, on-ground and air base) as well.  As long as the journey is about discovering music and somewhere, if we can blur the distance between Bollywood music and independent music, I think, we are home. We hope the journey is great.”

The entire team of RED FM has been working hard for Indie Hai Hum over a month since the launch of RED Indies.

Revealing about the same, Nisha Narayanan told media, “For the last one month, we requested a lot of our listeners to message us with the name of their favourite indie artists. The idea is to curate popular playlist together, irrespective of it being regional or national.”

“People can get in touch with us and share their music, we do have experts on the panel, who will help us curate music,” she further told media, while inviting indie artists to reach out to RED FM.

To this Darshan, who started as a young indie artist from Ahmedabad by uploading his music on YouTube, also added, “If you are doing independent music, upload your stuff and tag RED FM and reach out to me.”

To the fans, who are gladly awaiting the show, Narayanan gave a message, “Do support us, be a part of our journey, write to us and give us a feedback as well apart from recommending artists, irrespective of them being Hindi or belonging to any part of the country. I do think that we need to be more participative and engage our listeners and be more inclusive in it.”

Indie Hai Hum will start airing on RED FM from 27 July 2019, every Saturday from 9am to 11am with a repeat telecast on Sunday from 2pm to 4pm. The show will be simultaneously aired on RED FM’s sister radio station, Magic FM. The show will also simultaneously available to watch on RED FM’s digital platform, the shoot of which, has already been done.