MUMBAI: When you hit the success trail with a brand and a product you are more likely to extend it further. Just like Music Company, Saregama is doing. It is all charged up with sales of its radio-like looking digital product Carvaan flying off the shelves and is gearing up to launch the Caravan Mini (this one looks like a bluetooth speaker) preloaded with the MS Subbulakshmi songs.

“It will be launched later this year. We are also launching the Carvaan Tamil version in the month of December,” confirmed Saregama MD Vikram Mehra.

Elaborating on the product that has got the industry talking Mehra said, “Carvaan is nostalgia being given to people, packaged in a fashionable item. The younger generation is so much in the lean forward mode that a lot of times you forget the experience of just allowing the music to play.”

He further added, “You have no idea when you tune into Kishore Kumar -- on a Carvaan -- which Kishore Kumar song will play. When you stumble upon a song, it creates a moment of euphoria.”

The target audience of Carvaan initially was the elderly, but Saregama discovered it was finding custom with another age group as well. “What we are realising is that kids are gifting Carvaan to their parents in a very big way. And the ‘wow factor’ that they give to parents and grandparents is just moving by word of mouth in a very big fashion. It’s paying great dividends in terms of the income coming to the company, but more importantly, it is reintroducing the magic of that era of music,” explained Mehra.

On the song selection process of these devices, the head honcho stated, “We are running a big data engine out here. All these data points come back to us on monthly basis from all our OTT partners and YouTube. All that data is thrown in to start building rankings. This data has helped us put some of the biggest songs in Carvaan Mini.”

He further added, “Music is something that people across civilizations have enjoyed and will enjoy listening to. We need to find form factors in which music will be given to potential customers so, that they find value in it and music industry generates enough revenue to sustain itself."

Mehra gave his input on what has led to the changes in his company. “Let the customer be the centre of everything. Don’t make yourself the centre. We need to keep creating content that is relevant to the customer. Keep packaging and giving it to the customer. In the way he/she values it.”

He further stated that Saregama has the customer at the centre of it. They never think of themselves as the best. Customer research too plays an important part for Saregama thus; the senior management makes it a point to meet the customers on a personal level.

“I’ve travelled across the country extensively finding out what do they like and don’t like. We get too distant from the customer and don’t know what the customer wants. If we have managed to get little success in our numbers anything that I can credit this to is our ability to listen to the customers,” signed off Mehra.