WTF Podcast
The WTF Podcast, officially subtitled “Where’s the Fun,” is an Indian long-form interview series created and hosted by Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of Zerodha and founder of True Beacon. The podcast has published conversations with prominent Indian and international figures spanning business, politics, entertainment, science, and sport, and has established itself as one of the most-viewed long-form interview formats produced in India.
Format
The WTF Podcast consists of extended one-on-one or small-group conversations between Nikhil Kamath and his guests. Episodes are typically between forty-five minutes and two hours in duration. The conversations cover the subject’s background, career, and areas of expertise, but also broader questions about society, economics, education, governance, and personal philosophy.
The format is unscripted in the sense that the conversation is not read from prepared scripts, though Kamath and the production team research each guest before recording. The conversational style is characterised by genuine curiosity and a willingness to ask direct questions, including on topics that subjects might prefer not to address.
The podcast is produced primarily as a video programme distributed through YouTube, where it has accumulated a large subscriber count. It is also available in audio-only format through platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Video distribution has been the primary channel for audience growth, consistent with the broader dominance of YouTube as the platform for long-form Indian content consumption.
Episodes are published on an irregular rather than fixed weekly schedule.
History
Origins
The WTF Podcast was created by Nikhil Kamath in the late 2010s. Kamath has described the motivation for creating it as stemming from his own interest in understanding how successful people across different domains think about their work and their lives, and from a conviction that those conversations, if made accessible in long-form format, would be valuable to a large audience.
The podcast launched at a time when the Indian long-form podcast space was still relatively undeveloped compared to the United States and the United Kingdom, where long-form interview podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience and The Tim Ferriss Show had already established substantial audiences. WTF was among the early Indian programmes to attempt this format with significant production investment and an ambitious guest list.
Growth
The podcast grew over successive seasons, both in production quality and in the seniority and diversity of the guest list. Kamath’s social network as a prominent entrepreneur and investor gave him access to guests who might not have participated in less established programmes. As the podcast accumulated an audience and its production quality improved, the range and calibre of guests expanded further.
By the early 2020s, the WTF Podcast had become a well-recognised name in the Indian digital media landscape and had been covered in national media as a significant cultural and business phenomenon.
Notable episodes and guests
The WTF Podcast guest list has included figures across a wide range of fields:
Politics and government
- Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister of India (2004-2014). The episode featuring Singh was particularly notable given that he gave few long-form interviews after leaving office, making his appearance on WTF a significant public record of his reflections on his political career and India’s economic development.
- Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and founding Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI, which built the Aadhaar system). Nilekani has been one of the most significant figures in Indian digital infrastructure and the episode covered his work on Aadhaar, the India Stack, and the evolution of Indian digital public infrastructure.
Business
- Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons. The episode with Tata drew significant attention given his stature as India’s most respected industrialist. The conversation covered the history of the Tata Group, his personal philosophy, and his views on India’s development.
- N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, one of India’s largest IT services companies. The episode addressed Infosys’s founding, the development of the Indian IT industry, and Murthy’s views on work ethic and values.
- Raghuram Rajan, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (2013-2016) and professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Rajan is a prominent economist with publicly stated views on Indian economic policy and global macroeconomics; the episode covered both.
- Multiple Indian technology founders, venture investors, and business executives.
Culture and entertainment
- Shekhar Kapur, filmmaker and director known for films including Bandit Queen, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The episode covered his creative process, career, and philosophical interests.
- Various Indian artists, athletes, authors, and other public figures.
International guests
The podcast has expanded to include international guests, reflecting Nikhil Kamath’s own international profile and the growing global reach of the WTF platform.
Production
The WTF Podcast is produced in Bangalore. It maintains a dedicated production team responsible for research, pre-production, video and audio recording, post-production, and distribution. The production quality has improved substantially over the course of the podcast’s history, from a relatively modest setup in the early seasons to a professional studio environment with broadcast-quality video and audio.
The production team includes researchers who prepare background materials on each guest and draft areas of inquiry for Kamath, though the on-screen conversation retains an improvisational quality.
Audience and reach
The WTF Podcast has accumulated a substantial audience on YouTube, where its subscriber count and episode view counts place it among the leading long-form Indian podcast channels. The audience is primarily urban and English-speaking, reflecting both the language of the podcast (all episodes are conducted in English) and the demographics of the Indian YouTube audience for long-form content.
Specific episodes have reached audiences far beyond the podcast’s core subscriber base through social sharing, media coverage, and recommendation algorithms. The Manmohan Singh episode in particular circulated widely across Indian social media and was discussed in national media.
Significance in Indian media
The WTF Podcast occupies a particular cultural position in India as one of the few long-form interview programmes that has successfully attracted a senior tier of political, business, and cultural figures. Indian television and print media have long produced interviews with such figures, but the long-form podcast format enables a depth and duration of conversation that shorter formats cannot accommodate.
The programme has contributed to normalising long-form intellectual conversation as entertainment in India, demonstrating that audiences exist for extended discussions of substantive topics if those discussions are conducted engagingly. This has had a demonstrable effect on the Indian podcast landscape, where long-form interview programmes have grown significantly since WTF established the format.
Host background
Nikhil Kamath is the co-founder of Zerodha and the founder of True Beacon. His background in financial markets and investing is evident in his interviewing approach: he is particularly effective at asking probing questions about decision-making, risk, and the economics of different industries. However, his curiosity extends well beyond finance, as demonstrated by the diversity of the guest list.
His public profile as an entrepreneur and as a Giving Pledge signatory contributes to his ability to attract high-profile guests who might not agree to be interviewed by hosts without comparable standing. A full biographical account of Kamath is at Nikhil Kamath.
Controversies
No significant editorial or content controversies have been associated with the WTF Podcast itself. The podcast should be distinguished from the separate incident in June 2021 involving Nikhil Kamath and a charity chess match against Viswanathan Anand, which is documented in Kamath’s biography at Nikhil Kamath and was unrelated to the podcast.
Some episodes have generated social media discussion and occasional criticism relating to the views expressed by guests, which is a normal feature of any public affairs interview programme. No episode has been retracted or significantly edited as a result of such criticism.
Comparison with other Indian long-form interview programmes
The WTF Podcast emerged in a period when long-form podcast and YouTube interview formats were beginning to attract significant audiences in India. It is broadly comparable to, and competes with, programmes including The Ranveer Show (hosted by Ranveer Allahbadia), Figuring Out (hosted by Raj Shamani), and Think School’s interview series, all of which pursue a similar long-form interview format with Indian and international guests.
The WTF Podcast has typically targeted a more senior guest list than these peers, reflecting Nikhil Kamath’s professional network and the credibility he brings as a prominent entrepreneur and investor. The presence of current and former heads of government, senior regulators, and patriarch-generation business figures distinguishes WTF from programmes whose guest lists are primarily drawn from the contemporary founder and influencer class.
The podcast has been placed by commentators in the tradition of American long-form interview programmes that demonstrate serious conversation about substantive topics can find large digital audiences. In the Indian context, where television interview formats have often been constrained by time, commercial breaks, and the need to appeal to mass audiences, the podcast format enables a depth and specificity of conversation that broadcast formats typically cannot accommodate.
Economic model
The WTF Podcast is produced under the broader umbrella of Nikhil Kamath’s personal brand rather than as a product of Zerodha or True Beacon. Its economic model is based on a combination of YouTube advertising revenue (from the views accumulated by episodes on the channel), sponsorship arrangements for specific episodes or series, and the contribution the podcast makes to Kamath’s broader public profile, which has commercial and social value separate from any direct podcast revenue.
The production costs of the programme, which include a professional production team, studio facilities, and the operational overhead of researching and scheduling prominent guests, are substantial relative to many self-produced podcast operations. The programme has reached the scale at which these costs can be supported by platform revenue and sponsorship.
See also
References
- WTF Podcast YouTube channel, @nikhilkamathpodcast. Retrieved May 2026.
- WTF Podcast official website and episode archive, wtfpodcast.in. Retrieved May 2026.
- The Economic Times, “Nikhil Kamath’s WTF Podcast: reaching across generations of Indian leadership”, 2022.
- Mint, coverage of Manmohan Singh WTF Podcast episode, 2022.
- Spotify for Podcasters, WTF Podcast listing. Retrieved May 2026.
- Business Standard, “WTF Podcast with Ratan Tata: key moments”, 2022.
- The Hindu, “Nandan Nilekani on WTF Podcast: Aadhaar and India’s digital future”, 2021.