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About three years back, streaming apps and piracy had caused havoc across the music industry. CDs were on their way out, the so-called subscription model of music streaming was setting in. Saregama India was struggling to stay relevant.
New formats such as ‘music cards’ (pen drives with preloaded music from its repository) and pay-per-use music streaming did not fare well.
Saregama then brought in Carvaan, a speaker with pre-recorded songs from a library running into 300,000 tracks, with USB and Bluetooth options.
“We had nothing to lose, so we went ahead with it,” Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which owns Saregama India, tells BusinessLine .
But he hardly had an inkling of the disruption that this music box — designed on the lines of Murphy’s radio and made in China — would cause.
“Carvaan has been the biggest disruption since the iPod,” he claims.
Leveraging results
Today, Carvaan is critical to Saregama’s top-line. The company reported a standalone turnover of ₹360 crore in FY18, of which music sales contributed ₹293 crore, or about 82 per cent.
This includes six months of Carvaan sales.
“We are selling nearly 80,000 units a month now and hope to hit 100,000 units from July onwards,” Goenka says.
Carvaan’s success comes not just in numbers. A competitor approached Saregama with a request to use the technology.
Goenka is now looking to ramp up distribution and marketing spends, focus on both modern and general trade and on online platforms like Amazon.
The company also aims to tap markets in the UK, the US and Saudi Arabia, among others.
Product extensions
The company is now looking at product extensions. Right now there are two versions — a larger one priced at around ₹6,000 with 5,000 songs, and a smaller one (Carvaan Mini) for around ₹ 2,300 with 250-300 songs. These come with sub-variants.
On the cards is Carvaan with regional music and personalised play-list options. Even a karaoke version targeting youngsters is being mulled.
Saregama has re-entered film production with small budget films and is actively looking at content acquisition including film music production.
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