Saregama India Ltd. (SIL) has launched a Carvaan mini portable music player, offering a collection of 351 pre-loaded songs in Tamil, including compositions by legends such as Ilaiyaraaja, A.R. Rahman, M.S. Viswanathan and T.K. Ramamoorthy.
Vikram Mehra, managing director, Saregama India Ltd., said that the sales of Carvaan in other language versions, had already touched one million units.
SIL has also launched a similar mini version Carvaan Gurbani loaded with Punjabi devotional songs. Carvaan is a digital audio-player loaded with recorded music. Sporting the retro-look of a Murphy (brand owned by SIL) transistor, it offers the ease of listening to pre-loaded songs at the touch of a button. Formerly known as The Gramophone Company of India Ltd., SIL owns India’s largest music archive. SIL has now expanded into other branches of entertainment — publishing, television software and digital content. It also runs studio facilities in Dum Dum, Kolkata.
Launched in October 2017, Carvaan is distributed online and offline in two versions — mini and regular — and can play up to 5,000 songs. It has an in-built radio and is positioned as a gift, mainly for seniors not too comfortable with music-cards and ‘playlists’.
The erstwhile EMI (Gramophone Company of India’s earlier avatar) recorded its first song in 1902 sung by Gauhar Jan. India’s first movie-song for Alam Ara, the first talkie, is also in SIL’s archives alongside countless legendary melodies.
SIL was hit by the onset of digital music through various online platforms, besides the telecom industry’s cheap data tariffs.
In addition to monetising its existing Intellectual Property (IP) content, the firm is now building new IP through acquisition of songs in Hindi, Tamil and Marathi, and generating TV content in Tamil and low-budget thematic films (averaging ₹5 crore) targeted at the youth, using digital platforms.