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.
Saregama’s crown jewel is its catalog. They own the rights to the works of Kishore Kumar, R.D. Burman, Manna Dey, and a massive chunk of Lata Mangeshkar’s vocal cords. While new labels like T-Series fight over the remix rights to a Punjabi pop song that will die in six months, Saregama plays the long game. 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. To the tech world, Carvaan looked like a
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. You couldn't skip the sad songs if you wanted to
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.
By flexing its muscle, Saregama has secured better revenue shares than smaller labels, creating a two-tiered market where the past is actually more valuable than the present. As we look at the landscape of 2026, Saregama faces its most paradoxical challenge yet. The rise of AI voice cloning tools means that any teenager can now make a "new" Kishore Kumar song. Saregama has responded with a blitzkrieg of lawsuits and a proprietary "Artist Protection" protocol.