The initiative is designed to discover and nurture voice talent within the LGBTQIA+ community and senior adults (45+), providing voices with an opportunity to explore a career in dubbing and voice acting.
- Selected participants will undergo an 8-week intensive dubbing training with renowned voice professionals Sanket Mhatre (Dubbing Artist) and Hetal Varia (Voice, Accent and Dialect Coach).
30th September, 2024; Mumbai: Kommune and Netflix India have launched the third edition of Voices of Tomorrow (VOT), part of the Voice Equity Project. As India’s only professional initiative of its kind, VOT aims to diversify the dubbing industry by training and promoting voice talent from two underrepresented groups: adults over 45 and LGBTQIA+ individuals. The program offers comprehensive dubbing training, promotes voice acting as a viable career, and creates a safe, inclusive environment for participants. VOT seeks to enrich mainstream media voices, break down barriers, and spark conversations about inclusivity in the entertainment sector. Through this initiative, Netflix India and Kommune are working towards a more diverse and representative future for the dubbing industry.
The 5-month program is set to take place from September 2024 to January 2025 in collaboration with multiple Queer collectives and NGOs that work with senior citizens, along with Mumbai-based artist organisations and talent agencies. Through this partnership, it aims to test the voices of approximately 500 individuals, ultimately shortlisting 300 of them for in-person auditions.
According to the latest FICCI and EY media and entertainment industry report, OTT platforms continue to flourish and achieve scale through dubbing and subtitling as the share of vernacular content is projected to rise to 55% of all content produced. Additionally, the global e-learning market is projected to reach USD 325 billion by 2025, new opportunities are emerging for aspiring voice-over artists. However, dubbing as a profession is currently lesser known than other fields, with limited pathways for aspiring artists. VOT aims to change the status quo by bringing more representation to the Indian media space to bring out a change in the pre-existing system through diversity and inclusion. With ‘Authenticity of Voice’ as the core motto of Voice of Tomorrow, the program aims to offer a safe space for the participants from the queer community to introduce more trained LGBTQIA+ artists into the dubbing talent pool, along with providing a second chance to the senior participants to follow their passion and bring in real voices from the acting, theatre and other performance arts communities.
Tapping into the market need for diverse voices and projecting the growth of the industry, in the first edition, the initiative selected individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community and children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Owing to the success of the previous edition, the second edition focused on senior adults and LGBTQIA+ individuals. A total of 21 participants were chosen in
the first year, followed by 25 in the second, each receiving professional training to launch their careers as dubbing artists. Following the training, multiple participants from the previous two editions have kickstarted their careers in dubbing through various voice projects, including dubbing for movies, series, audiobooks, ads, etc. in Hindi and their regional languages. Additionally, the training has also empowered the participants to succeed in other allied fields like podcasting, theatre, and translating, among others. This success of the initiative over the past two years has led Kommune and Netflix India to come back with another edition of this exciting opportunity to discover new talent.
