Striking a new note, Saregama moves into film content creation

RP Sanjiv Goenka-owned music production house Saregama India Ltd is diversifying into film and television content production.

In a bid to capitalise on the booming digital consumer base, the company is also digitising its large collection of film music.

“We have already started producing shows for television. We are also getting into film production and looking at 100 films in next five years,” Vikram Mehra, MD, Saregama India, told BusinessLine .

He said the films will have a budget of ₹3.5 crore each. “The first slate of films will be in Tamil, English and Hindi and will be largely for the online audience,” he said.

This apart, Saregama is also repackaging its evergreen tracks for the online consumer brigade.

“We have already digitised over one lakh tracks. It is a painstaking process and we are doing it to preserve our vast library of music for the next generation of consumers,” he said.

He added that the mechanism also helped it to reach a wider online audience.

Saregama has a music repertoire across several genres and languages, including music of the first film made in Bollywood Alaam Ara (1931).

In March 2015, Saregama relaunched its online music store, consisting of more than 117,000 downloadable songs in 15 languages lossless WAV format (a larger file with higher quality).

Asked on the impact of piracy on its music content, Mehra said that piracy has been one of the major concerns for the industry and has impacted all the players.

“All our efforts to digitise our music library has been to cut piracy. Instead of being threatened by online, we decided to make it work in our favour. In fact, our entire library is available online for consumers”.

Besides, the company said it has also undertaken innovative initiatives such as launching a music card.

The credit card shaped 4 GB USB memory stick is pre-loaded with 150 HD quality songs of various genres and can be bought via online shopping portals like Amazon, Flipkart and also offline stores such as Croma.

He said the company has also tied up with various OTT players such as Wynk, Hungama and Saavn for licensing its music.

“We have also tied up with various wallets to facilitate payment gateways. In fact, our biggest sale comes from the United Kingdom, the US and Singapore,” Mehra said.

Saregama India had clocked a revenue of ₹215 crore with a net profit of ₹7.5 crore during the year ended March 31, 2016.

Mehra added that the company is also looking at acquiring new film music.

The company has not been acquiring new music for the last few years.

“We have recently acquired the music of Vidya Balan starrer Kahaani 2 ,” he added.

The BSE and NSE listed Saregama’s competitiors in the business include T Series, Zee Music and Sony Music.

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