Dolly Rishi joins BIG FM as deputy general manager – head, audio content

Dolly Rishi has done what most career ladders refuse to allow: walked away from a city, a comfort zone and a job she had outgrown, then landed somewhere better anyway. The content strategist has joined BIG FM as deputy general manager and head of audio content, capping a year she has openly called one of the hardest of her life.

Rishi spent the last five and a half years at Pocket FM, rising to director of programming, where she built original IP, scaled content formats and chased the kind of audience-first storytelling that keeps listeners coming back rather than wandering off after one episode. Before audio claimed her, she cut her teeth in Indian television’s fiction factory, working as an executive producer at Colors and Zee, with credits running through Naagin, Kumkum Bhagya, Ishq Mein Marjawan and Dil Se Dil Tak. Thirteen years, three platforms, one obsession: what actually makes someone stay tuned in.

The move to BIG FM also marks a personal homecoming as much as a professional one. Rishi left Mumbai for Delhi to be closer to her parents, a decision she admits she second-guessed for a long time before deciding it was the right one, raising her son with grandparents nearby and reclaiming family time that a sprawling media career rarely leaves room for. She has been candid about the cost of the last twelve months too: returning from maternity leave while juggling studies, work and motherhood, leaning hard on family support to get through it without cracking.

BIG FM gets a content leader who has already proven she can build IP from scratch and make it stick, at a moment when audio platforms are scrapping harder than ever for listener attention against an avalanche of streaming and short-form competition. Rishi’s own verdict on the chaos of the past year doubles as a fairly good pitch for her next one: life rarely goes to plan, but the unplanned detour has a habit of dropping you exactly where you were always meant to be.