Indian streaming music service Saavn (South Asian Audio Video Network) today announced that it has bagged US$100 million in a series C round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments, Steadview Capital, Liberty Media, and Mousse Partners also participated in the round.
Saavn is a music streaming service with a catalogue of millions of songs including Bollywood hits, classics, regional music, and even a lot of English hits. The service now covers all major labels in the US, including Sony and Universal. It also entered into licensing agreements with Warner Music and EMI Music that helped it add 800,000 tracks from international artists.
The startup claims to have 14 million monthly active users, about 3 million of which joined since March this year. The fresh funding will be used for product development, marketing, and new content partnerships. Saavn will also invest in developing a Windows app.
Saavn started off in 2006 as a distributor of Indian music and films to North American publishers like Amazon, Hulu, and iTunes. The founders – Rishi Malhotra, Vin Bhat, and Paramdeep Singh – later pivoted it into a music streaming platform, sensing larger opportunity.
Besides the Android and iOS app, Saavn is currently accessible on a Firefox-based player called Saavn Music Feed. Users can also opt for the Saavn Pro service that provides offline-sync feature for a fee of US$3.99 per month. It has tied up with major telcos like Vodafone and Airtel to allow users to opt for operator billing. And it even offers a Twitter-powered radio station that enables its users to send song requests via a tweet to the @SaavnRadio account.
Saavn also makes money from ad revenues against streams of licensed content.
The music streaming industry is plagued with ills like piracy. Some of the casualties include Dhingana, which shut down and later got acquired by US streaming service Rdio to spearhead its expansion into India and the surrounding region. Flipkart had a similar service called Flyte which was also shut down.
Saavn competes with Bessemer Venture Partners-backed Hungama and Times Group’s Gaana.
Editing by Charlie Custer
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