One of the biggest questions almost everybody searches on the internet: How do billionaires see opportunities before anyone else?
It's simply because you have access to data ahead of others. Say when I took the power business, Kolkata was reeling under 14-15 hours of power cuts every day, and so to me, if you could solve this problem, there was an opportunity.
How much revenue does it do today?
Our assets there are about 40,000 crores.
10 crores to 40,000 crores.
Dr. Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the RPSG Group. In this episode, he shares powerful insights, lessons, and fascinating stories from his entrepreneurial journey that can help you build and scale your business.
Tell me ideas today which you feel are going to become something big.
Renewable energy in every sense of the word. Solar, wind, combined with battery storage, I think is a great, great avenue. I do believe data centers is a very big opportunity, and you see all the biggies getting into data centers.
Coming to your family now, the business is running in the family since 220 years and it's only expanding and getting bigger and bigger. You're seventh generation, right? There must be some core value which runs in your family. What is that?
So one is reinvent yourself. You get into industries that are promising as opposed to industries that are sunset and be dispassionate about divestments. The second thing was that you be fair in your dealings and basically just being compassionate. So people who work with you not only root for you but they pray for you.
Tell me the story of how did you acquire Sarajama?
Sarajama was acquired by my father. He was a very great friend of Bhaskar. He told him... he told him... Dad said okay. That's how the deal got done.
Does it bother you when people hate you or accuse you of something or troll you? What is your source of information right now? Like what do you read every day? Where do you get your information from?
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As a business leader, okay, one of the biggest questions which almost everybody searches on the internet, okay, which is fascinating to me. It's a very noob, naive question but it is what it is. How do billionaires or like large industrialists and business leaders see opportunities before anyone else?
It's simply because you have access to data ahead of others. You're meeting people at a certain level. You're in touch with consultants, with the McKinseys of the world and the BCGs of the world, and so you're getting ideas. And then you have your own experience, and so not every idea sounds good, not every idea is doable, not every idea is meant for you. But because you have access to that data and information before others, it helps.
What is your source of information right now? Like what do you read every day? Where do you get your information from? At least the ones you can tell which everybody can access.
You know, it's generally about actually reading things on areas that interest you. So you can take social media to read it. You can use a Claude to get data. You can, I mean, you can do whatever. But if you can keep getting data on things that interest you, something somewhere will sound more promising to you as a business proposition, and then you get a McKinsey or a BCG to actually validate whether it makes sense or not.
So out of all the ideas, hundreds of ideas you're getting, information, people you're meeting, right? They're telling you thousands of ideas, right? Tell me top three ideas today which you feel are going to become something big, whoever if somebody decides to build a business in that area.
Renewable energy in every sense of the word, solar, wind, hybrid. The Prime Minister has now, I mean, it's remarkable to see the brilliance of Modi. He's floated this idea of floating solar panels. So you're not consuming land area to do this. So you're going to do it on water. Anything to do with renewable energy, I think, is a huge opportunity. The energy requirements of the country are enormous, and thermal will take you up to a point. So this whole thing of renewable energy combined with battery storage, I think, is a great, great avenue.
And the whole proposition that goes into it, solar cells, solar modules, everything, each one of those would individually be very good propositions. So it's like say 30-40 years ago, there's a whole ecosystem that developed in Chennai for all the components that went into a car. So this is the same thing for renewable. It's not only about just generation of electricity. It's about the whole paraphernalia that goes into building a solar plant or a wind plant, everything.
Okay. Is there any specific thing in the renewable which you see right now where India doesn't have a capacity or capability to do? Because you're in the energy business so you understand this, right? That one is building these large solar plants, right, where people are going to just generate electricity. But then other is do we need junction boxes? Do we need modules? Do we need storage? Do we need batteries? Like somehow what is that one thing if you can be very specific? Is there anything that you know?
You know, I think at the end of the day you need more capacity on everything. So you start with transformers, you start with turbines. You get on to the actual panels, the modules, the cells. Then you get on to battery. I think that whole area, I mean, we have the capability but we are not scaled up to the extent that we will be in a few years. So I think getting to scale is very important in any of this, and you feel opportunities in everything, in everywhere. Then this whole thing about battery. You know, it's not only about battery storage where you can store power for a few hours. But it's about battery per se, and that in itself is just such a huge opportunity. And whether it's lithium, whether it's non-lithium, I mean, technology is changing every day, and how do you get into things, into components, into chemicals that go into the battery, and that speed up charging, that retain or enable retention of the charge for a longer period. So I think all this, this whole range of products is nascent. We are developing, we still have to develop. I mean, renewable energy, yes, but in batteries, I think a lot more needs to be done, is being done.
So that's one. Second opportunity, this is two actually. Battery is one, renewable is the other. I do believe data centers is a very big opportunity, and you see all the biggies getting into data centers. And the amount of data crunching that Indians are doing and will do in the future, and the world will do, and can India become the hub for data centers everywhere? So that's another very big opportunity, but I think that scale is so large that barring an Ambani and Adani, I think not many Indian players will be getting into it.
Yeah, that's what, like, so tell me an opportunity which young entrepreneurs can get in because this is beyond people's means at this point.
You get unicorns, several unicorns every year. I mean, but I frankly, whereas I admire them, I applaud them, I do not understand this concept of keeping on incurring losses. And yes, if it's a finite plan for 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, I can understand it. But you get higher valuations and you take more equity to fund the losses, but at some stage you have to get into profits, right? So you cannot always drive the business purely on valuations. At some stage it has to be self-sustaining and self-generating. So there are lots of ideas and there are lots of thoughts and lots of unicorns and people are doing brilliantly, but you don't want yet another Byju's. You know, so I think one has to be careful. Enthusiasm is very good, enterprise is very good, entrepreneurship is very good, but temper it with reality or realism. It can't be just valuations. It can be valuations to start off with, and you can use that as a means to finance it. And this is a great, great gift of this government to Indian entrepreneurship that capital is available for any good idea today. So Urban Company does brilliantly with electricians, mass, this, that, what a concept, but they've built a model which is working and working profitably. So I think at the end of the day, within a finite period you need to have a plan that gets to profits.
Yeah. Do you see any idea right now which can get to, which excites you, which any young entrepreneur somewhere is doing? Maybe not at scale but you just understand and you're like there is something in it.
You know, we are looking at Ayurveda-inspired pharmaceutical in a very big way. We've launched very small, without fanfare, without hype, without marketing yet. We've done clinical trials for these products. So they are Ayurveda-inspired but they are completely herbal or flower-based. So no chemicals, no this, no that. So we are launching, we've launched, we've modified those into infusions. So made it modern with centuries of experience of what is curing what, but making it easy to consume and a modern version. A Chyawanprash coming in a toffee form so kids will not be averse to consuming it. So it's sleep drops which are based on flowers, and I consume them and they are very effective. So there are lots of these things and this is one example. It doesn't consume a lot of capital. Yes, a lot of research, a lot of patience, but once you get the product right then you can start scaling up.
So Ayurveda, you think there's a big opportunity right now.
I think there is a very big opportunity.
In India and across the world. But what we have to do for the world is the world will look at documented data, and sadly we as a country have not documented the success of Ayurveda. So we'll have to go through that process of clinical trials. That's a long one. It's a long one but if we don't start then we'll never get there.
True. So with 360 or you're getting with Dr. Vaidya's?
So 360 is the modern thing. Dr. Vaidya's is the conventional one.
But through both you're getting, okay. You know, I was reading about you and one thing which not many people know and I found fascinating and I thought that is how I'll take the conversation forward today. I was reading that there are a lot of articles and a lot of people who called your father takeover king, right? And then there was another piece which I was reading that you are the transformation king, like why? And then I went in deep and tried to understand that why is that. And then I was looking at the power business, the electricity business, then the Sarajama. So I want to go each business by business, story by story and I want to understand. But before I go there, you have repeatedly just taken businesses which people wrote off, like they, you know, other people called it that it's a bad business, you should not go, it's in debt, it's almost dying. You have taken those businesses, you have turned around them. What do you see that other people don't see?
I don't know what other people don't see. I know what I see. And to me, say when I took the power business, it was, Kolkata was reeling under 14-15 hours of power cuts every day. As a kid when I was growing up we didn't have electricity for at least 13-14 hours every day. When we went to examination halls, we were given blotting papers to absorb the sweat. Otherwise, the paper would smudge. And so to me, if you could solve this problem, there was an opportunity. So when the opportunity presented itself, I grabbed it, little realizing that the effort required to make this change or transformation would be enormous. My father with his experience realized that it's a stupid move. And he opposed it. But my mother said, 'Let him make his mistakes.' And she persuaded him to allow me to go ahead with it. So the process of transformation was herculean, and I didn't realize that within 6 months people expected the impossible. It doesn't happen like that. And then from you becoming a hope for a cure, you became the problem, because of you power cuts are happening. So you were not only dealing with the fundamental issue of low generation, poor distribution, poor network, poor connectivity, poor metering, you were also dealing with the social stigma of being responsible for power cuts. So it was about actually transforming the mindset of the people in the company, and once we got our act together as a business, then about altering the mindset of the city. That listen, yes we took time, we took 3 years or 4 years, but we got there. And we are here to serve you. And then from Kolkata we went to Noida. From Noida we went to Bharatpur. Then from there to Kota, then to Bikaner, then to Chandigarh. And now with experience it's very easy for us to do it, but the first one was difficult. So it's about introducing metering. 45 years ago many of the connections were not metered. And the meters wouldn't work. So they would insert lead underneath the meter. Now the lead disoriented the reading of the meter. It just spoiled the calibration of the circuit and therefore the reading was all haywire. So it was literally area by area, connection by connection. So we for example said if somebody has 10 ACs installed and assuming you're operating an AC for 8 hours a day, so this should be your bill. Now then we started mapping if this should be your bill, your bill is much less, then we need to investigate that supply. And 90% of such cases were pilfering. So it was about, and the same people who were pilfering saw you as a threat because you were stopping their income. You were stopping that. And therefore they were working against you. They were working for you to fail. So they would, so it was through media. In those days there was no social media. So they would finance campaigns against us in media, and they would do this and they would go into the court and then they would all kinds of things, arrange small little protests, yeah, and unions, they would create consumer associations which were all fake. Some were genuine but most of them were fake and chamber of commerce would object and things like that. So it was not only transformation of the business, it was transformation of the mindset and it was transformation of a culture that you pay for what you consume. This is not like you're entitled to free electricity all your life, right?
But how do you change that when everyone is stealing and getting it for free? How do you actually set a mechanism that they can't steal anymore? And the entire city, you're not talking about one specific little thing.
It was not the entire city. It was bulk of the city. It was bulk of the industry which was the big consumers, and bulk of industrialists who were big consumers of ours at home. Right. And there were touts who would go around. So we had a situation where a tout came in, met, and said, 'I'll make it 5,000 rupees, my cut will be 20,000,' and he had certain officials of my company on his payroll. So it was quite like a, it was a horrendous setup. It was an organized, it was organized complete. And then you had, you said you can't go and, you know, if you're going on inspections, you can't go in this area because a certain community lives and you cannot touch them. And so you had to deal with all kinds of issues, and it's taken several years.
Would goons disturb you? Because I'm assuming if there's an organized crime, there'll be thousands of people on payroll and there'll be goons.
But you know, so now I realize what my father meant when he said it's a stupid decision, but I'm very happy that I'm in the power business. I'm actually happy that I took the call when I did. And I'm happy that I've been able to make this change. Because it leaves me with some sense of satisfaction that there was a change that one was able to do.
What was the first change you made now that you saw company losses, broken network, broken connections, broken distribution, the entire city stealing from you, industrialists are against you, there are goons disturbing you. There are so many things to fix. Where did you start fixing? Like what was the first step? First thing that you were like, 'Okay, let me fix this.' And then the next problem.
The first thing was really to actually try and get people within my company to believe that this can be changed rather than believe. So it was to instill that confidence that this is doable, and the stealing would stop, and the stealing could stop. So it was not certain. It was always probability. It was a probability because how do you know when it's been institutionalized and the government is as much part of it as industry is, as consumers are. So you're fighting multiple battles for each connection. It was arduous. It was time-consuming. It was painstaking. But yes, we've got there.
But what did you see in a broken business? This company was broken, right? And from an outsider's perspective, let's say first you thought that okay, you want to be a part of providing power and you want to be in this business, right? But once you're in the process of maybe making a bid, acquiring, you are understanding and you're doing due diligence in your own sense, right? So you are getting aware about these problems that there will be the community will be against us, employees will be against us. There are a lot of bribery going on. There's lot of poor connections. Everything is going on. So you understand all of these problems. It's a broken company with broken concept and nobody believes. So broken belief as well. Now what are you seeing in the business? Why do you want it?
So there was no due diligence in those days. There was no due diligence. So it just seemed like a decent opportunity. So it wasn't like some exorbitant sum. So my approach was, at worst, that was the approach. So that was the confidence, risk it, the family won't sink because of this.
How much revenue does it do today? The power business.
It does a fair bit. It's a public, right? So, yeah, I mean our assets there are about 40,000 crores and we are in the process of building, investments underway are about 54,000 crores in that business.
10 crores to 40,000 crores.
I should look for businesses which are like completely broken right now.
No, but you know, fun apart, it was, there must be something fundamental you must have changed. It's not easy to turn around and transform a 10 crore business with so many problems. No, but it's also about changing the culture, a culture of suspicion to a culture of confidence and a sense of pride in doing something that nobody thought was doable. And once we got that sense of pride within the organization, then it became much easier.
How do you do that? How do you talk?
It was about constantly communicating within the team, making them believe, making them believe that it's in addition to doing work, in addition to getting recognition, they will get blessings. And that worked for you. That worked.
There was a, I was reading that your friends used to joke about it every time there was a night of power cut.
Absolutely. They used to be like you're the one responsible for it. So I remember there was this restaurant called Polynia in the Oberoi Hotel, and we had gone there for somebody's birthday celebration. Restaurants, we could go to restaurants often. Okay. So whenever you went it was a big thing. The whole restaurant was saying, 'Here's the man who's responsible for the power cuts.' And that day I felt like sort of saying, you know, I wish I'd listened to dad.
How embarrassed were you?
I was embarrassed and I was irritated because I said, you know, damn it, by that time from 14 hours you had already gone to about 6 hours. You were not zero but you'd gone to 6 hours so it was an improved situation. Appreciate the improvement instead of finding fault.
But did you have a bad day that night or you just, you were like, I'll show them one day?
No, it was neither. It was actually a sense of wrong decision. Did I make a wrong decision? You know, is it worth this kind of misaction?
Did you ever feel that you are in a thankless business?
Yes. I mean now you realize a utility is a thankless business. A utility means you're there to give service. The fact that you're giving very good service doesn't count for anything because over a period of 3 months it gets taken for granted, and then if you have one glitch then it's a problem. So it keeps us on our toes because nobody will appreciate you for 364 days of electricity. One day if we don't get electricity, 1 hour, 5 minutes, yeah, I was like in 2026 how can we lose? But I think the city is thankfully very appreciative of what has happened here. And in hindsight, yes. Yeah, but we do get, there are some naysayers, but by and large we get a lot of affection and love from the city for transforming this piece.
Yeah. Tell me for a layman, let's say if someone's watching it, what happens behind the scene? Let's say if I switch on a light right now, right, and automatically the lights are on, what is going behind? Where is the electricity born? How is it reaching me? What are the phases in between?
So you have a transformer. So first you generate power. So we have our own power generating stations, you generate the power. Then you take the power, and that gets generated through thermal or solar or, so it's largely for the city, it's yet largely thermal. It's going to be over the next 2 to 3 years 50% will become renewable. But you generate from wherever. Then you transport the power. You call it wheeling. So you have wires, you have to lay the wires. Then you have transformers and you have substations which modulate the frequency of the power, and from there it goes on to individual, then again you have connections into individual homes, and then it goes through that and then you have a meter which measures the amount of power you're consuming or drawing.
And how much of this entire chain comes from your company here in Kolkata?
Everything. Everything from that till the last switch, like every transformer, every, everything, everything. So when we took over we didn't have substations, we didn't have a full network which was efficient, we didn't have transformers which were efficient, so it was a whole system that needed refixing.
What's the most difficult part of it? The generation or the distribution or service?
The generation is actually easier. Because once your plant is set up, then you only need preventive maintenance and regular maintenance and the plant churns out. It's dealing with a consumer that's far more difficult.
And is it like, but dealing with consumer, that's service, right? So every time they'll have billing issues or something like that, those kind of little...
You actually have to keep constantly communicating, educating. And so we had a similar experience in Greater Noida where when we took over the distribution, we didn't realize we were getting into situations where gundas were involved. And so people came and took chairs and banged them over the heads of our people. So it was quite horrific.
No, this was several years ago when we took over. That today it's a very highly successful company, and in the UP assembly it's been hailed as an extraordinary example of privatization. So you were telling me so people were hitting and then, and so again it was a repeat. But once you've gone through one it's easier to go through the next. But it's a process and from 30-40 years ago to now it's become much easier because people are more exposed, educated. They frankly want a service and 90% of the people are willing to pay for the service for the consumption. Right. So that mindset has changed.
Fair. Fair. And what is it about rains that we somehow still lose electricity during the rains? Like something goes off, something specifically which is hard about the business in rains. It doesn't work out.
In our, in the cities where we distribute, that doesn't happen.
That. Okay. But in usual cities you'll always hear like I'm from Indore, right? So there's 24/7, 365 days there is power. If ever sometime there's a power cut, it's usually midnight during the rains, something has happened, and people usually blame it that oh because the weather was bad.
I don't think weather has anything to do with that.
Okay, it's just an excuse. So if a city loses power, okay, now that the distribution is right, generation is right, servicing is right, your systems in place, still there must be some black swan event where city loses power.
You can have, say if you have a huge cyclone, then you can have a situation which we've had in Kolkata where trees get uprooted and they fall on power lines, so then the lines snap. So there have been those situations. We had Amphan which was one of the biggest cyclones that India has seen, and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation did not have electric saws. So you could not cut the trees. Over 200 trees which were like 70, 80, 100 years old had fallen because the government had built, you know, instead of the mud and everything the tree grew on, they had built roads and pavements. So as it is the roots had become shaky, they had cut off the roots. So the moment, yeah, and they fell on lines. Now you have to cut the trees. But the Kolkata Municipal Corporation did not have electric saws. So then again the angst came on us. We are not the civic authority, right? We had a few, we had a few electric saws. But so these are the situations where you can have, if you're consuming your transformer, you've asked for X kilowatt of power, and without intimation, you're actually drawing 2X or 3X. Up to a point, the transformer has the ability to give you extra power. Beyond that the transformer bursts. So people have asked for, they've said we've got eight ACs, but they've actually installed 18. The transformer will not function. It'll either burst or just stop functioning. And in which case then you have a power cut and one transformer is not serving just one supply. It's serving a whole area. So then the power goes off everywhere.
So one person or like five people can be responsible for something like this.
So the weakest link in the entire power cut situation apart from natural calamities is the overconsumption. It's the overconsumption without... or is it like some part or something in transformer, some loose thing which keeps... I see the technology has advanced so much that it's very rare for the machine to fail.
Okay. So it's overconsumption.
Interesting. I didn't know that. I always thought that there is some loose connection which goes wrong in transformer that's why the transformer burst and then we face all of these problems.
We've had one power cut in our office once, which was, and we had to change that office because then we later realized that it was the overconsumption problem. And we had to, because our podcast was supposed to go live at 9:00 PM as scheduled, about 7:00 PM the whole office is off, just gone. And but that's what for us it was first and then now we call them, they're like, 'We'll fix it.' So now there were like seven, eight team members. I was not even there in India and I didn't even know this is happening. Okay. They didn't even tell me. There were like four or five of these, like my team members. They picked up a system. They sat on someone's bike, went to someone's house, connected the system there, and uploaded the whole podcast.
But you can do it. But you know, frankly, that is an illegal connection, right? Going to someone's house and you've done it for a particular period, that's fine. Just for that uploading and coming back, that's fine. But this is the kind of thing that people do all the time. Meaning they hook onto somebody else's supply.
But we went inside the house and can use the system.
That's why now, we, not hooking, close to 80% of our supply is underground. So you can't do all that.
No, no. I didn't hook. But you actually connected to someone else's...
Like we went to the house and then inside house we started a system and did it.
But if you have something like this, what option do you have?
Said this work and we, like the moment we got to know, in our head the first 15 minutes I must have cursed everybody in the electricity world because that's the natural reaction.
Yeah, it's a very natural reaction.
This was 25, not, it was last year I think, 2025 this is happening.
So that was the problem. Okay, so this was your power company. When last time when we met after a podcast you were telling me about Sarajama and that story has been in my head and it's printed. Tell me the story of how did you acquire Sarajama, that's one, at what price? That's also I want to know, and then see.
Okay, so Sarajama was acquired by my father. And he was a very great friend of the worldwide CEO of HMV as it was called in those days, Bhaskar Menon. And Bhaskar Menon was in India and he invited my dad for a cup of coffee. And I don't know one thing or another. He told him... so Dad came and he said... so my mother was very much into music. She would listen to music for about five, six hours every day and she knew every song, everything, like the lyrics, everything. So she said... so Dad then went and in those days there were no mobiles and phones. So he went and met Bhaskar Menon and he told him...
So he said, he said, so dad said okay, that's how the deal got literally. And then mom was involved with running it, but she was running it out of emotion and not from a business perspective.
Then you, it was those days records, LPs, and then it got converted into cassettes. Cassettes got converted into CDs.
And we set up a CD manufacturing facility, etc., etc., etc. And we had some of the biggest hits of all time, 1942, Love Story, uh, duplicate of, uh, Yashar. Uh, to some, some phenomenal hits, but we were grappling with piracy.
And there was mass scale piracy. There was organized piracy.
Uh, and it was an organized thing that was happening.
So I went to Arun Jetli who was one of the foremost lawyers and legal brains in the country, and I said, he study. So he said let's meet tomorrow evening at 9. So I went into his chamber tomorrow evening at 9, and he said I've got this answer. I said, 'What is the answer?' He said, he said we'll have to file the court and he says hearing but he says 100%, which is what happened. So that was the first step towards protecting our volumes and getting legitimate sales or at least capturing part of the sales that were illegitimate.
And then the whole process got digitized and distribution became digital. So then there was no question of piracy or counterfeiting or anything of that kind and so that menace went away.
But how does this business make money? What's the way?
We own, we own roughly, I mean it's about 50% of the total Indian music recorded or maybe 45% of the total Indian music recorded. So till the time T-Series became a potent threat all the music came to us. So all the recording was with us.
Then we somehow for 10, 12 years we were absent from the music market.
No reason, no plausible reason. We said we don't want to compete with, uh, this and that. It was basically we, I think, had lost track.
Okay. There's little ignorance.
Uh, and then we came up with Karva which was a technological marvel, and then we realized that the more and more the Spotify and the Savans and, uh, you know, the Gaanas of the world came, people were not willing to pay only for old repertoire.
Uh, they wanted the old one but it was new which was more relevant.
Yeah. And then we got back into new Hindi film content. And today we have over the last few years if you see, the biggest hits are ours. Literally the biggest hits are ours.
I mean take, take the top 10 of the last 5 years. Six would be ours.
But how does this business make money? Like what do you mean by owning music? You own the copyright.
And then where do you sell it? Who makes money?
So you sell it. I mean YouTube consumption, Spotify, Gaana, in AdSense revenue.
Huh. And then you, you, you have the societies, the PPLs and the IPs which collect revenue for concerts and performances and then it's divided in a certain proportion.
And what do you mean by concerts? So somebody has to sing you a song, they'll have to pay you.
So if there's a DJ who's playing,
So that is not always possible to correct. But therefore, uh, and now the government has liberalized weddings and all from not having to pay this.
Okay. So but legally they were supposed to pay.
So if any DJ is playing a song in a wedding,
Was supposed to pay but now it's no more.
Now it's no more. So anybody can play but in a restaurant if you're playing,
In a wedding. Okay. But in a restaurant if someone's playing then they have to pay you.
So they pay, they pay to the, no. So typically to make it easier you pay to a society.
So there is a PPL which is a society which collects and then an IPRS which collects from,
Everyone and then distributes to the music companies.
Is it a big business just music owning?
Yes. Yes. It's a big business.
Just like, just owning music and owning rights of this or is there some other revenue out of it?
No, it's, it's about actually monetizing that music. I mean, so some two companies have recently taken our songs as jingles for the ads.
And what is the biggest challenge in this business, in the music business?
You know there is no certainty that the music will be a hit. So for every hit you will have five flops.
So the predictable model is not there.
It's not completely predictable. It's somewhat unpredictable.
But then how do you build a successful business in this?
So it has to be a portfolio. It's like a fund in a way, right?
There has to be some thesis right for a fund to succeed.
It depends upon what is the storyline of the film, who is the director, who is the producer, who are the stars, so is there a higher probability of success?
So Sanjay Bhansali is making Love and War, that is going to be probably the biggest film of recent times. It has Ranveer, Alia, and Vicky. So you have as big a star cast as you can imagine. And Sanjay does things on a scale that is unbelievable, and he creates magic. So the chances of that succeeding are the highest compared to anything else.
So just that. So if you have to pay 50 crores to acquire the audio rights, you say okay you're betting on Sanjay Bhansali's creativity, on his ear for music, on his ability to picturize, on the stars who are going, you know, so it's, it's a combination.
And his ability to do the storytelling.
But do you get into, this is movie music, but do you get into then independent music?
Oh yes we do. I mean we don't,
Like how, like Warner or people would like to,
Yeah. So one of the biggest wedding songs of all time is our non-film album.
It's, it's now played at every wedding.
And it's a non-movie song.
It's a non-movie song. It's a beautiful song.
So it runs like a proper label.
Of course. Of course. So we've launched, uh, this young kid couple of years ago, three, four years ago called Mahi.
He is Shan's son, a brilliant student. He gave up his education at the age of 17 to focus purely on music and he's probably 19 or 20 or 21 now. Has the potential of becoming one of the biggest music stars of all time. There's another young talent called Arjun Tawar who, uh, was the main lead for our theatrical production called Disco Dancer. Sings well, dances well. So he's done a few albums for us. Uh, so a lot of, uh, I mean we've taken Diljit Dosanjh and we got him to do a song in Karan Johar's film for which we had the audio rights. Uh, and so there is a lot of things that you do.
Is with Diljit, is Diljit.
He's with Warner. I don't know.
He's, he does independent albums. I mean Arijit has just done a single for us recently. So you know it's,
The big ones would do with everyone and he would capitalize on certain things and,
But all Diljit's concerts are done by Saregama.
And I was looking at some chart that your old songs are suddenly now making you the maximum revenue. All right. Why is that? Like there are few songs which specifically like Maahi, these songs are now, their revenue, independently songs are growing like crazily.
Because you see they're brilliant songs and there are so many of them. A lot of Kishore Kumar songs do phenomenally for us.
Like now it's why it's reviving.
Because retro is back. And when you have reality shows like the Indian Idol and all, they are all singing these songs so all of them have large audiences so people are hearing them. And radio stations are playing it so I think it's, it's a combination of multiple factors and we are promoting it also so.
Fair. And, and a large part of promoting that, okay, at least in my household all of a sudden this was couple of years back so my parents because of us started listening to new songs, right? But now there's revived because of Karva.
Exactly. So Karva has become the biggest tool for retro music and every home has a Karva.
Yeah. Like my mom has gone back to now listening to only Lata Mangeshkar and she's like she doesn't care about our songs anymore.
And you see if that's playing and if you're around so you're also listening to it.
Yeah. And say my grandkids if I'm listening to it they are also listening to it. They may or may not enjoy it but they start identifying with it when they hear it and discos are playing it a lot.
I have started listening to them because my mom now, exactly.
And now mom's not even there then also I hear like two, three songs in my playlist I've added which are old songs. So you know like I was, um, I had gone for somebody's, uh, pre-wedding, okay, party and most of the songs that they were playing were, uh, Kishore Kumar songs.
But those were the songs.
At the end of the day it's,
Uh, was the one which was there, you know, Bachna Ae Haseeno.
So, revival of that plays everywhere. It's from, I don't even think that it's an old song like it's our generation song because it been remixed so much.
So tell me about Karva. How that came out like in the world of technology, in the world of,
So it's a technological marvel honestly because nobody has been able to even reverse engineer and everyone has tried.
But it's an old device like it's,
The device looks old, it's not an old device. It's a, it's, it's a completely modern device but we wanted it to be associated with nostalgia.
How did that thought came in like start from scratch like how, why did you even think of having,
Yes. So the idea is that how do you get, how do you revive your catalog? Who listens to your catalog is 50 plus, 60 plus people in those days. Now it's 40 plus. Uh, so they don't use, they're not listening because they, they don't know how to go to their, uh, phones and, uh, play music. They don't have Spotify. It's inconvenient for them. How do you make it in a way technology proof? Use technology to make it technology proof and make it simple. So that was the concept and we worked on it and we got it.
And then how do you actually,
Don't intimidate them with just the appearance. And my family used to own Murphy. And in our conference room by some quirk of coincidence there was an old Murphy radio line. So the thought came up around that table that why don't we do something like this? So it's, it's actually very similar to an old Murphy radio.
And so that it's not intimidating to the older generation and it's technology. So all you have to do, it's, it's, it's, it's not even the click of a button. It's this,
Yeah. It's, it's rotating a knob.
Which is what they've done all their lives.
And you've created moods playlists, artists wise, film wise, genre wise. So it just keeps playing. And so that has been, it was a technological success, it was a marketing success and that has contributed hugely to the revival of the popularity of the old songs. And it, the thought started with how can we serve people who listen to our audience.
And then when we wanted to market it we didn't want to spend too much money because we didn't know whether it'll succeed or not.
So we wanted to make, we wanted to do social media and in those days social media was just about beginning to get relevant. So we, we wanted to create a film which was not a typical ad film.
Okay. And it was a story we said which had to make you cry. So we gave the brief to this filmmaker.
And he came up with this concept that a husband and wife, their time together was spent in listening to old music. And that is how they spent their retired life. Then the wife passed away and the husband didn't know what to do. Uh, and he didn't know how to put on a cassette or a CD or whatever it was. Then his children got him this Karva and he started listening to this and he found his zest for life again. So when the first time I heard the narration, I had tears in my eyes because of the way it was narrated. And when I saw the film, I cried. I literally cried. And it took 3 months for the film to go viral, but then it did. And because of the film, Karva became like a hot property.
So the marketing was brilliant.
And we spent almost no money on it because it was just reels and the same things being reposted and, uh, people were not sharing it for Karva. They were saying how sensitive and how beautiful and what a lovely film.
And then by the process it was Karva, Karva, Karva, Karva film, Karva. So and most people didn't even call it Karva. They called it Caravan. They still do. But that's fine. As long as they keep buying it, it's fine.
Do you think I was looking at this trend in, in western world there all of a sudden now vinyl culture has come back, right? The old, they're buying those old like you can put out that vinyl and then you run it and it, it's, it's something which is becoming big.
Yeah. But you know what's happening also is it's something that's coming back to an extent.
Like the vintage value in everything is coming back.
Yeah. The vintage value is coming back but it's not going to become mass. So we are also doing some bits of it but it's not going to be bread and butter for us ever.
Yeah. And it's going to be a niche. And does it, is it also because India never had vinyl at mass. So that's why people don't even have a vintage value around it.
No people do. Okay. I mean maybe individual households didn't but there was the Sarpanch's house or this or that which had it so people visit to it on a community basis.
Okay. So people are aware of the concept.
So we also did initially we went to different panchayats and all and we gifted them a Karva.
And then people were experiencing what it is and then people started buying it because of that.
Mhm. So would you call this the biggest transformation moment for Saregama?
Karva. And then now the next big thing is getting into films in a big way. Uh, with our investment and eventually 50% stake in, uh, Sanjay Bhansali's company. Uh,
Fair. I mean but how did this start like where, from where did you get an idea that hey we should be involved in films and we should be involved with Sanjay.
So we, we had started producing our own films. So 26 or 27 of our films are on Hotstar, Prime, Netflix, etc., etc. But we didn't have the courage to get into big budget films and that's where the money is, right? On a studio level production.
At a studio level and how do you convert it into a full-fledged studio? It would take us 10 years to do it.
So the next obvious thing was to really buy into a studio. And Sanjay Bhansali is the biggest, the grandest and the best of them all. Right? So he was always somebody who we wanted and then I was having lunch with Karan Johar in London.
And he said you know I'm looking at divesting 50% of my company Dharma, would you be interested?
So we got into the dialogue and we almost came to a deal. We, in fact, did come to a deal. Then the legal teams took over and they screwed up big time.
So you, the current deal fell through.
And in, so Karan backed out after that.
Karan did the deal with Adab.
But in the meanwhile we had got an approach from Bhansali Productions.
Oh they already approached you?
Yeah and because we were in dialogue with Dharma we were sort of, we felt it would not be ethical to pursue that dialogue. The moment that deal didn't happen, we pursued this and this was, he was, Sanjay is anyway the, I mean nobody can produce films like Sanjay can. Like every film is beautiful, I mean, and, and they're massive.
But we can't compare like the Karan or Sanjay at all, they're two totally different models.
And they're both geniuses in their own right.
They're both geniuses and I have nothing but the deepest of respect for both of them.
They're both very good friends. Uh, we are in regular touch. Uh, and I really have nothing but respect and affection for both. But I'm delighted to be with Sanjay.
And how did your first, so first time when the Bhansali production reached out to you, how did that meeting or first time when you met him?
It was actually very, uh, smooth.
It took a lot of time but it was very smooth because I think both were keen to work together and both appreciated the value that the other was bringing and neither wanted to intrude on the other's expertise. So I think it sort of worked out well. He has an extraordinary, uh, CEO, uh, very capable lady. So I think the team is good.
And I think we are very excited.
Nice. Nice. It's, do you think regional cinema, regional music, the, the entire conversation around regional content, do you think that's the future?
Yes, we, we are now getting into regional in a very big way. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, uh, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi.
Where do you see the maximum growth now? Where is it? Like,
Right now a lot of growth is happening in the Telugu sector. But everything is growing and growing exponentially. So we've acquired a Punjabi label. We've acquired a small thing in the Bhojpuri label. I mean all of them are growing and regional music consumption is just growing leaps and bounds.
But any specific pattern or trend you're seeing that this specific language is doing well? Like Punjabi just killed it right now. Punjabi is almost a global music.
It's, it's really big like all around the world.
Volumes in Telugu are very big.
But is it consumption is global or Indian?
It's by Telugu speaking people across the world.
Mhm. No, it's not growing beyond Telugu speaking people yet. Like how Punjabi has gone. I don't speak Punjabi but I listen to Punjabi music. I love it. Like the music is like the music is great, right. I don't understand a single lyric but I just don't think the rhythm of Telugu, I mean of even the South Indian music has a lot of rhythm.
Uh, it's a different kind of rhythm. It's a different kind of a beat.
