Saregama Exclusive -

For decades, the company was a colonial conduit, pressing records for the British officers stationed in Shimla. But in the 1930s, it discovered its true purpose: Bollywood. By the time it rebranded to "Saregama" (named after the musical notes Sa, Re, Ga, Ma) in the early 2000s, it had swallowed up the back catalogs of HMV, Times Music, and a dozen defunct regional labels.

But Saregama is not a museum. It is a sleeping giant that woke up to find itself the most powerful player in a $2.5 billion Indian music streaming war. How did a company that sold physical records of Bhakti hymns survive the cassette, the CD, the MP3, and the pandemic? The answer lies in the peculiar economics of nostalgia and the "R.D. Burman Tax." To understand Saregama, you have to erase the modern understanding of music piracy. In 1902, when the Gramophone Company of India set up shop, piracy meant a rival label physically stamping your disc. The company’s first major coup was convincing Gauhar Jaan, a legendary courtesan of Calcutta, to sing into a horn. That recording—"Jogiya"—became the first commercial record in South Asia. saregama

Saregama’s CEO, Vikram Mehra, has played this game masterfully. He understands that for a global streamer, Old Hindi music is not a niche—it is the second most streamed genre behind current Bollywood. Without Saregama, Spotify is just a podcast app. For decades, the company was a colonial conduit,

Enter .

In an industry obsessed with the "next big thing," Saregama has bet everything on the "last big thing." It is a testament to the idea that music is not just a product, but a public good. As long as there are parents who want to introduce their children to their youth, and as long as there are algorithms that reward the familiar, the 120-year-old company will endure. But Saregama is not a museum

To the tech world, Carvaan looked like a joke: a bulky, plastic portable speaker with no Bluetooth (initially) and no screen. It had just one function: play 5,000 pre-loaded Saregama songs. You couldn't change the playlist. You couldn't skip the sad songs if you wanted to. It was the anti-Spotify.

But the smarter move is leaning into (synchronization licensing). You can't hear a period film set in the 1970s without a Saregama track bleeding through the radio. You can't watch a Netflix documentary about the India-Pakistan war without "Aye Watan" playing in the background.