Public | |
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 13 August 1946 (The Gramophone Company), 3 November 2000 (Saregama) |
Headquarters | Kolkata, Mumbai, India |
Area served
|
Global |
Key people
|
Vikram Mehra (MD) |
Parent | RPSG Group |
Website | http://www.saregama.com/ |
Saregama India Ltd. is an Indian music label and content producer for Indian television.
Its music catalogue consists of more than 117,000 songs in 14 languages, built over a period of more than 100 years. It has daily and weekly TV shows currently on air with television networks in India.
Saregama’s head office is located in Mumbai, with other offices in Kolkata, Delhi & Chennai. It is listed on the and .
The company was founded in 1901. It produced the first song recorded in India, and later moved into the production of cinema and television content, digital retailing, aggregation, radio programming and events.
In 1901, operations started as the first overseas branch of Electrical & Musical Industries Limited, EMI London.
The company was incorporated on 13 August 1946 with the name of ‘The Gramophone Co. (India) Limited’. The name of the Company was subsequently changed to ‘The Gramophone Co. of India Limited’ effective 1 April 1956. 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.
The name of the company was then changed from "The Gramophone Company of India Limited" to ‘Saregama India Limited’ on November 3, 2000. The name "Saregama" refers to the first four notes of the Indian musical scale.
In 2005, the remaining EMI stake was sold off to the parent company.
The Gramophone Company is better known as HMV (His Master's Voice) in India. RPG Group has been using the brand under license from the former parent company, EMI.
On 3 November 2000, RPG Group changed the company's name to Saregama India Limited, and introduced a music label of the same name.
The Recording Studio and the entire Dum Dum establishment of Saregama India Limited was built in 1928. 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.