How Saregama's Carvaan is making retro music popular among younger audiences

From what started as a journey that revived the good-old transistor in people's homes with pre-loaded classics of Kishore Kumar, Lata Manageshkar and Mohammad Rafi a few years ago, Saragama India's Carvaan, is all set to foray into live entertainment. "Our premium nostalgia music offering will no longer be just restricted to a physical product," says Vikram Mehra, MD, Saregama India.

The Rs 600-crore music and content company, which was among the few that targeted not the millennial but the 40-plus matured audience with Carvaan, has met with immense success. It has even come up with variants of Carvaan in regional languages and has sold 1.76 million units  since its launch in 2017. The company's music listening business revenue grew by 33 per cent last fiscal, while Carvaan and the licensing business registered a 92 per cent jump in profits.

Saragama has now started making retro music fashionable among the younger audiences. While the live music launch is still a few months away, the company has launched Carvaan Lounge as part of its YouTube channel. Lounge has some of the greatest Bollywood classics reinterpreted by new age singers such as Neeti Mohan and Papoon. "Through offerings like Lounge we are trying to attract the younger audience to retro music," says Mehra.

But the core of Carvaan lies in creating options for the silver generation. Apart from the regular Carvaan (priced at Rs 6,000) the company has launched Carvaan Mini. Priced at Rs 2,500, the Mini variants include Bhagvad Gita, Gurbani and Bhakti songs. "These variants came from the insight that consumers want either Bhagvad Gita or Gurbani playing every morning in the background as they do their daily chores, lot of them even want it to be playing in their shops or offices," explains Mehra.

The company has also launched Carvaan 2.0, which along with music also has a host of on-demand non-music content such as stock market news, BBC news, home remedies and so on. The plan is to launch kids content, Carnatic music and much more. Mehra calls Carvaan 2.0 a podcast platform, which gives consumers access to varieties of on-demand content on a single platform. "Our research told us that most forty-plus consumers find it tedious to download podcasts, so we are trying to put all of it on a single platform that consumers can access by merely turning a knob," says Mehra.

The company has recently launched Carvaan in the US.

Also read: Saregama Carvaan Gold review: Smart and retro

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