Saregama


Saregama India Ltd. is India's
oldest music label owned by RP- Sanjiv Goenka Group of companies. The company is listed on the NSE and BSE with its head office located in Kolkata and other offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. Apart from music, Saregama also produces films under the brand name Yoodlee Films and multi-language Television content.
Saregama owns music repertoire across Film music, Carnatic, Hindustani classical, Devotional etc. in all prominent Indian languages. The first song recorded in India by Gauhar Jaan in 1902 and the first film made in Bollywood ‘Alaam Ara' in 1931 were under the music label. Some of the prominent Indian artists who have produced their music with Saregama are Lata Mangeshkar, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Shamshad Begum, Asha Bhosle, Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Jagjit Singh, Pt Bhimsen Joshi, Pt Jasraj, Chamkila, Gurdas Mann etc.
The company has expanded its catalogue to become the largest in-perpetuity global owner of both sound recording and publishing copyrights of Indian music across 14 different languages.

History

EMI

In 1901, the company began operations by recording the first song in India, as the first overseas branch of Electric & Musical Industries Limited, EMI London. It was incorporated in Calcutta as The Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. The following year, Gramophone inventor Emile Berliner's assistant Fred Gaisberg came to India "on a mission to capture music". Gauhar Jaan became the first Indian artist to be recorded there, on 5 January 1902. In 1907, a record factory was started in Dum Dum in Calcutta, the first outside the UK.
On 13 August 1946, it was incorporated as a Private Limited company with the name of ‘The Gramophone Co. Limited'. It was converted into a public company on 28 October 1968 and consequently the name of the company was changed to ‘The Gramophone Company of India Limited'. RPG Group took over the company in 1985 from EMI when the company's financial health was poor. The name of the company was then changed from The Gramophone Company of India Limited to its current name Saregama India Limited on 3 November 2000. In 2005, the remaining EMI stake was sold off to the parent company.

HMV

For the first 100 years, the company retailed its products under the brand name HMV which was synonymous with film music in India. From 2000 onwards, it started retailing its products under the brand name, Saregama.

Dum Dum Recording Studio

Saregama's recording studio, called Dum Dum studio, was built in 1928 in Calcutta. It is one of the oldest studios in Southeast Asia. Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore had recorded his songs and poems in his own voice at this studio. Rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam's voice was also recorded here.The Dum Dum Recording studio was also a house to manufacturing and production of Gramophone Records and thereafter Music Cassettes. With advent of digital formats, the physical formats progressively went out of consumer patronage and consequently, these manufacturing facilities
were shut down.

Saregama Carvaan

3.1 Carvaan

Carvaan is a portable music player with a pre-loaded collection of mainly vintage Bollywood songs. It is an easy to use device and comprises in-built stereo speakers. Since its inception, Saregama has launched multiple variants of Carvaan in different languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi.
In 2018, Saregama Carvaan Premium was launched with additional features. There are 52 additional stations and app support is provided for iOS and Android to create playlist and controlling the music system.
In the year 2019, Saregama launched Carvaan 2.O. In addition to the collection of 5000 songs, Wi-Fi connectivity is available which provides access to over 150 audio stations and over 20,000 songs. The content pushed as podcast includes devotional, children rhymes, talk shows, travel, food, health etc.  
Carvaan Gold and Carvaan Gold 2.O are the premium versions of Saregama Carvaan which have all the old features of Carvaan along with Wi-Fi connectivity, additional audio stations, Champagne Gold and Rose Gold colours, and harman/kardon sound system.
The other variants include Carvaan GO and Carvaan Mini.

3.2 Carvaan GO

Carvaan GO is a portable digital audio player with in-built speakers and a pre-loaded collection of 3000 retro Hindi songs of popular singing legends of the yesteryear. The songs are divided into various categories such as Artistes, Specials and Playlists. The personal device has a rechargeable battery with approximately 7-hour playtime. The additional features include Bluetooth, Aux Cable, micro SD, and FM/AM options.

3.3 Carvaan Mini

Carvaan Mini is a portable music player with multiple variants of Bhakti, Rabindrasangeet, and Gurbani. Other variants have a collection of 351 songs dedicated to Hindi Legends, Bengali Legends, Kannada Legends, Malayalam Legends, Tamil Legends, Telugu Legends, and Carvaan Mini M. S. Subbulakshmi consisting of 351 songs.
Saregama recently launched Carvaan Mini Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, pre-loaded with 18 Adhyays, 700 verses of Bhagavad Gita and 101 Krishna Bhajans.

Awards

Yoodlee films, a Saregama venture has also produced movies that have won awards in various national and international film festivals:-
Saregama Music Cards are USB memory sticks which comes pre-loaded with 200 HD-quality songs of various genres e.g. Legends, Romance, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, RD Burman, Illayairaja etc.

Saregama Classical App

Saregama Classical is a music based streaming app available on android and iOS devices with music of artistes in three major subgenres of Indian Classical music, i.e. Hindustani, Carnatic and Fusion. Works of legends like M S Subbulakshmi, Pt. Jasraj, Pt Bhimsen Joshi, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Usd. Bade Gulam Ali Khan, Karaikudi Mani, N. Ramani, Lalgudi Jayaraman are available as part of the app.

Saregama Shakti App

Saregama Shakti, an Indian devotional music based streaming app which offers Hindu devotional music from renowned artistes like Lata Mangeshkar, Anup Jalota, Suresh Wadkar, Jagjit Singh, Asha Bhosle etc. The app also offers audio recitals of granths like Tulsi Ramayana, Geeta Govinda, Sundar
Kand, Satyanarayan Katha, Sai Satcharitra Granth and Krishna Charit Manas etc. The entire content catalogue of Art of Living is also available on the app.

Yoodlee Films

Yoodlee films is the film division of Saregama India Ltd. through which it plans to produce 100 films by 2022. Besides traditional script sourcing by the studio, the company also uses Crowdingit platform, which crowdsources scripts for this project.

Television Content

Saregama produces content for TV channels in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali. The company has created many serials and shows.