Founded in New Delhi in 2016, Boxout.fm has grown from an independent online radio station into one of India’s most respected community-driven music platforms. At a time when music discovery increasingly shifted towards algorithms and passive consumption, Boxout.fm carved out a different path — one rooted in human curation, local scenes and cultural exchange.
Through 24/7 programming led by DJs, selectors and radio hosts, the platform became a home for India’s non-mainstream music communities while documenting the country’s evolving underground music landscape in real time. Beyond radio, Boxout.fm expanded into physical spaces through projects like Boxout Wednesdays — now India’s longest-running midweek club night — alongside festivals including Jazz Weekender and Boxout Weekender, helping foster new communities around independent music and alternative culture.
Over the years, the platform has also developed international collaborations with organisations and platforms including Boiler Room, Worldwide FM, British Council and Goethe-Institut, connecting local artists and scenes in India with wider global audiences.
In 2025, Boxout.fm was selected as one of the recipients of the Ballantine’s True Music Fund powered by shesaid.so — an initiative supporting music communities, collectives and independent cultural projects through funding and mentorship. The support has contributed to the revival of Boxout.fm’s physical radio space, the development of new digital programming formats and the expansion of its long-term vision for community-driven storytelling and independent music culture in India.
In this conversation, Boxout.fm reflects on community-building, international collaboration, the evolving role of independent radio, and how platforms can continue creating meaningful cultural spaces in an increasingly fragmented digital landscape.
From Boxout Wednesdays to larger-scale projects like Jazz Weekender and Boxout Weekender, how have your events contributed to building a sustainable music community in India?
Mohammed Abood (Founder, Boxout.fm): Everything we've built at Boxout.fm has followed the same logic: the radio creates the community, the events give it a physical home.
Boxout Wednesdays became the cauldron through which a new and active music and art community was born. It was never conceived as a club night in the traditional sense — it was a weekly commitment, a proof of concept that there was an audience in India hungry for something more intentional than what commercial venues were offering. It became the longest-running midweek nightclub residency in the country. That kind of consistency over years is what builds real community — not one big moment, but hundreds of smaller ones stacked on top of each other.
Jazz Weekender grew out of the same instinct, but with a different ambition. The inaugural edition in 2022 was organised to celebrate International Jazz Day, showcasing some of the genre's most exciting Indian and international artists. What we wanted to prove with Jazz Weekender was that India had an audience not just for electronic music, but for the full spectrum of improvised, genre-crossing music — jazz, neo-soul, R&B, funk, fusion, Latin. The festival firmly established itself as a cornerstone of New Delhi's cultural calendar, attracting over 4,000 attendees across its editions. By its fourth edition in 2025, we had international headliners from across Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East sharing the stage under that banyan tree at 1AQ with some of India's most compelling live acts.
What makes these events meaningful beyond the numbers is the model. Boxout Weekender, unusually for a festival in India, always had an all-local lineup comprising a selection of our show hosts. That was a deliberate choice. We weren't just programming a festival — we were giving our community a stage and saying: you are the main act. The people who built their craft through Boxout.fm's radio are the same people who headline our events. That's what a sustainable ecosystem looks like. It's circular, not extractive.
The community doesn't just attend these events — it builds them, performs at them, and grows through them. That's the difference between a platform and a scene.
Boxout.fm has developed strong international partnerships over the years. How have these collaborations influenced your programming and expanded your reach beyond India?
MA: From the beginning, we were clear that being India-based didn't mean being India-only. The question we kept asking ourselves was: how do we make sure the music being made in this country reaches the rest of the world — and how do we bring the world back here in a way that enriches the community rather than just importing a brand?
As a forerunner in the space of collaboration, Boxout.fm expanded its reach across geographies with partnerships with longstanding institutions such as Institut Français' Fête de la Musique, Goethe Institut and the German Embassy, The British Council, Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, as well as younger cultural juggernauts like Boiler Room, Rinse France and Worldwide FM. Each of those partnerships had a distinct character. Working with Boiler Room in 2017 meant that the Indian underground was being seen by a global electronic music audience on the world's biggest broadcast platform for the culture. Working with the British Council meant we could fund genuine artistic exchange — not just a stream, but artists physically travelling, performing, recording and learning from each other.
The Delhi to Derry project was probably the clearest expression of what international collaboration means to us at its best. Six Indian artists from the Boxout.fm community were able to perform live sets to a new audience in the UK — some for the first time. The live-streamed showcase featured 18 live and DJ performances from New Delhi and just as many from Derry. That's reciprocity. It's not India being spotlighted as exotic — it's two electronic music communities recognising each other as peers and creating something together.
The Boxout In Transit series extended that logic geographically across Asia, taking the radio format to cities like Colombo, Karachi, Amman, Hanoi, Dubai, Kathmandu, Bangkok, and eventually Berlin — marking the first time the series ventured into Europe, in collaboration with Club Gretchen. Every stop was a chance to introduce a new city to what Indian independent music sounds like in 2024, and to bring that city's energy back into our programming.
The influence flows both ways. Artists from the Boxout.fm community have gone on to enjoy careers across Europe and Asia — Suchi, for example, gaining acclaim from Boiler Room and BBC Radio 1 Dance for her percussive grooves and dreamy breaks. That's what good international partnership produces: not just a one-off exchange, but actual career trajectories that wouldn't have been possible without the platform.
In 2026, as we rebuild and refocus, these global relationships remain our most valuable equity. They signal that Boxout.fm isn't simply an Indian story — it's a model for how a community radio built with integrity can carry the culture of its home city to the world.
You were selected for the True Music Fund in 2025. What were your expectations going into the programme, and how did the experience compare in reality?
Ayesha Dikshit (Associate Director, Boxout.fm):
Going into the programme, we initially saw the True Music Fund as a means to support a specific idea we had been developing around reactivating the Boxout.fm radio space. We expected it to help us execute that vision, both financially and in terms of visibility, and to provide a platform to bring the radio back into focus.
In reality, the experience expanded beyond that initial scope. While the financial support was important, the process gave us the room to adapt the idea as it unfolded, rather than feeling locked into a fixed outcome.
What stood out most was how the programme enabled a shift in perspective. Instead of thinking in terms of rebuilding something as it once existed, it encouraged us to move forward with a format that feels more responsive and open-ended. It also reinforced the value of creating work that can exist across multiple touch-points, rather than being tied to a single space or structure.
In that sense, the experience was not just about delivering a defined end result, and more about setting a direction for how Boxout.fm can continue to grow, now and into the future.
How did the True Music Fund support your development—whether financially, strategically, or through network access—and what impact has that had on your work since?
AD: The True Music Fund played a really important role in helping us bring Boxout.fm back in a way that actually makes sense for how people engage with music today. We didn’t end up building a permanent physical radio space, but we were able to bring back the spirit of radio through digital formats unfolding in unconventional spaces.
We hosted a series of radio pop-ups, including a collaboration at Method Delhi (A contemporary art gallery in New Delhi) as part of our Nine Lives exhibition. We hosted over 15 artists across a wide spectrum of sounds and practices, reflecting the diversity and inclusivity that sits at the core of Boxout.fm. And started putting out content on YouTube, using video as the main format to reimagine what radio can look like today which enabled us to transform the project in a way that feels aligned with how music is now consumed across various digital platforms.
Beyond the immediate programming, the fund has helped us lay the groundwork for the next phase of Boxout.fm. We’re now working towards bringing the radio player back onto our website, which will further strengthen the connection between our broadcast roots and our evolving digital format.
This process has allowed us to explore radio in a more fluid way, not tied to a single format or space, but something that can evolve across platforms while still staying rooted in independent music.
