Amitabh Bachchan’s grand-daughter Navya Nanda launches a podcast with mother, Shweta Bachchan Nanda and grandmother Jaya Bachchan

The first episode of Navya Naveli Nanda’s audio podcast ‘What The Hell Navya’ feels familiar. In conversation with her mother and grandmother, the banter is friendly, and good-hearted, typical of close family. 

The 25-year-old who is co-founder and CEO of health-tech company Aaraa Health, and grand-daughter of Amitabh Bachchan makes her podcast debut with mother Shweta Bachchan-Nanda and grandmother, actor Jaya Bachchan. The three women discuss a range of topics: financial independence, navigating professional life, love and relationships over the podcast’s 10 episodes. 

In the first episode, that dropped on September 27,  the three generations of Bachchan family women introduce each other giving listeners a glimpse of how they see each other, different from what the rest of the world knows them.

“I spoke about things I was genuinely curious about and conversations I wanted to have with my nani and mother. It is special to be able to sit down with them, have this equation and be able to have open conversations about things. Work, financial independence, relationships, love… these are questions any 25-year-old woman will have and look to family for guidance,” says Navya over video call from Mumbai. .

Navya Naveli Nanda
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Across generations

Kavita Rajwade, co-founder IVM Podcasts, the creator of the show, says, “I knew Navya was a perfect fit because she is 25, runs a health-tech company (Aaraa Health), and the family she comes from.” She adds, “It is a great pan-generation conversation idea. Usually, we release our podcasts from Monday to Friday, but new episodes of this podcast drop on Saturday. We want to make it a ‘family listen’ that brings the family together…it is all PG-13,” Kavita adds. 

The idea was conceived during the lockdown when, like everyone, Navya also found herself spending more time at home with her family. That three generations of women could sit down to talk about things that matter, bringing differing opinions to the table, drew her to IVM’s idea.

Although Navya says she didn’t make any new discoveries about her mother or grandmother, she learnt that her views on specific topics aligned more with her grandmother than her mother. “You would naturally assume my mother’s view would not be very different from mine since she is closer to my generation than my nani.” There were disagreements too at the end of which they agreed to meet in the middle.   

Bringing them on board

Navya says she learnt though the process that despite being strong women they allowed her to do what she wanted, “more than finding out new things about them, I have come to appreciate this through the experience. I also got to learn a lot from them.” Navya says she is happy that people will get to listen to her mother, Shweta, who keeps a low profile. “She has a lot of knowledge and experience, and though I will not admit it most of the time she makes sense 100% of the time.“  

The podcast is not scripted. “The conversation was free-flowing. We came in with a rough idea of what we wanted to talk about, other than that we never really prepared ourselves,” she says adding that getting her mother and grandmother to participate was not very difficult since it was for her. It helped that her mother is an avid podcast listener.  

What The Hell Navya is streaming across audio platforms