Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity.

We have with us today Vikram Mehra, Managing Director; Abhishek Kapoor, CFO; and Pankaj Kedia, Executive Director Investor Relations. I shall now hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks.

Over to you, gentlemen.

Thank you, and a very, very good afternoon to all of you. Let me start the call by introducing our new CFO, Abhishek Kapoor.

Abhishek brings in over 25 years of hardcore finance experience across Sula Vineyards, PepsiCo, HT Media, etc. Our earlier CFO, Pankaj, did a fabulous job, and we heartfully thank him for that.

I'm very, very sure that Abhishek will take the thoroughness and the transparency of our financial processes and accounting to the next level. Quarter one, financial year '27, saw our revenue from operations at ₹263.6 crore, with year-on-year growth of 27%; our adjusted EBITDA of ₹112.4 crore, with year-on-year growth of 69%; and operational PBT at ₹70 crore, with year-on-year growth of 38%.

The numbers of the quarter look healthy, but I would reiterate, like I've been doing right now for over 60 quarters, please evaluate our performance on a rolling 12-month basis. Whether it's a good quarter or a bad quarter, don't judge us only on the basis of one quarter.

In our industry, the stability comes in only on a rolling 12-month basis. In 2025, the global recorded music at US$31.7 billion saw new heights, but India got only a percent of that, in spite of housing 18% of the world population.

We today are operating in the most underpenetrated large music market on Earth, and our entire strategy at Saregama is built around harnessing this 20-year opportunity in front of us. Let me jump onto the music vertical first.

On a quarterly basis, the overall music vertical, comprising of licensing, artist management, and retail, recorded revenue of ₹230.6 crore, which was a 39% year-on-year growth; a quarterly EBITDA of ₹139.8 crore, which was a 36% year-on-year growth; and a quarterly net margin of ₹99.6 crore, which was a 30% year-on-year growth for us. Music vertical had a low base in Q1 last year, which has also helped us in posting such a strong growth number this year.

If I have to look at on a full-year basis, we maintain our guidance of the music vertical growing between 20% to 23% year-on-year. On the profitability front, we had stated in FY24 that it would take us two to three years before the growth in EBITDA and profit began to follow the revenue growth trajectory.

We are entering that cycle now, where content bought two to three years ago has started to contribute towards positive margins. Albums like Stree 2, Amaran, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, GOAT, Sarkaru Vaari Paata, etc., are hit albums which are now contributing positive margins.

There's another data point which is worth sharing. In financial year '26, 60% of all music revenue at Saregama came from music released post-2000.

I'm repeating, 60% of the revenue in last financial year came from music of the 21st century. While at Saregama, we proudly steward the musical and heritage of India, we take care of it, we cherish it, we try to monetize it, but the fact is that we are now a new-age IP company with a large part of our revenue coming from brand new IP, which has 60 to 80 years of life left in front of it.

Overall, the company released 750-odd originals and premium recreations across Hindi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, and Haryanvi songs. Albums like Krishna Avataram, which was a Hindi album, or a Marathi song Ved Lavlay, these were able to hit music charts during the quarter.

Our spend on new music content this year is expected to be anything between ₹300 to ₹350 crore. Most of that is already committed.

Big albums lined up include Love & War, which is coming out in January; Rajinikanth's Dharman, which is a Kamal Haasan's company's production; Telugu cinema's most awaited film Paradise; Dharma's film with Kartik Aaryan called Dhadak 2; and another Bhansali production film with Tiger Shroff are some of the albums which are expected to release in this financial year. We have also entered into a multi-language, multi-year deal with a partner for Indian pop content.

This is across Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam languages. We are successfully holding on to our leadership position in Haryanvi in partnership with the erstwhile Nav promoters.

This quarter finally saw us release new Punjabi songs after a long gap, and we want to follow this up with a very big Arjan Dhillon album later this quarter, that is Q2. We continue with our guidance of a five-year payback period, followed by 55 to 75 years of returns.

Music catalogue globally is increasingly treated as an infrastructure-like, inflation-linked asset class, which is why institutional capital is now flowing into this space through either JVs or direct catalogue purchases. A 180,000-odd song catalogue, growing at close to 5 to 6,000 new releases every year, is exactly the kind of asset that compounds value over decades.

The push from digital platforms like Spotify, YouTube, JioSaavn, Amazon to build paid subscription revenue continues in the country, with more and more labels working proactively along with the platforms to accelerate this process. A recent Indian consumer study done by EY and the apex music body called IMI states that 64% of free music customers in India are ready to shift to a reasonably priced paid service if the free content stops.

It just tells us what we always knew, basis the success of the video streaming apps in the country, or the paid televisions services like digital cable and DTH, that Indian customer can afford to pay, and is ready to pay provided they see value in it. One of the biggest way of showing value is stop supply of free content.

At Saregama, we maintain our bullish position on subscription growth happening in the country. Just to put the things in perspective, paid streaming penetration is 67% in Sweden, 57% in US.

Even a Brazil and a China are closer to 18%, while we are just 3%. When I say percent, it means percentage of the total internet users in a market.

This is basis Goldman Sachs estimates. Every percentage point of penetration is growing over 10 million paying subscribers.

We believe Indian market, if the subscription is priced correctly, which means closer to 100 bucks, and if the supply of free is somewhere curtailed, we should not have a problem touching a 100 million paid subscription mark pretty soon. This is a consensus that majority of the labels actually hold.

Let me talk about AI. Saregama's position on AI-based music remains that we support licensed innovation, but will continue our fight against unlicensed exploitation of our music.

All our new digital licensing agreements are building protection against dilution of our rights and any potential frauds. Also, as shared earlier, we have created two AI-dedicated teams in Saregama to optimize both cost and speed of delivery.

The first is a content team that's using third-party GenAI tools to create neighboring audio content like podcast using Saregama's songs, and also building new-age music videos around our older songs. The second team is looking at every process within the company with the objective to optimize the process using AI tools.

We should be in a position to see the impact of these initiatives by the end of the year. While the global music majors are now talking about expanding the artist brand beyond streaming, we have been doing our part quietly over the last few years in this space.

Today, it's already becoming a meaningful revenue contributor through our work done on artist management side, live events side, and the brand partnership vertical. Artist management, the newest vertical under music, works by making the music-based artist popular through their content releases and then monetizing them via bookings for live events, weddings, and brand endorsements, from which Saregama earns a share.

At the end of this quarter, we represent 309 artists with more than 440 million follower and subscriber base for these artists on Instagram and YouTube combined. As our investment in new audio and video content grows, these artists are going to become bigger, and with digital advertising growing at 15% per annum, we believe artists and this influencer economy can be a big beneficiary, adding further to both our top line and bottom line.

Let me talk about video. This quarter saw the video vertical revenue declining by 53% to around ₹17 crore.

Ladies and gentlemen, please keep in mind, this is by design and not by chance. We have shared with you after our Bhansali acquisition that we are taking a conscious call to wind down our films business and make all our investments through the Bhansali Productions channel, which means the film segment revenue is eventually going to come down.

We continue to grow our Gen Z-targeted short-form and content under FilterCopy, as well as keep on focusing on TV and web shows. Live events, FY27 started with us expanding our live vertical into multiple formats, helping us diversify our risk.

We extended the Carvaan brand into smaller concerts under the Carvaan Live banner, targeting middle-aged and older audiences that enjoy a sit-down, premium music listening experience. 23 such shows were produced in quarter one.

We further built up our devotional format with 22 shows featuring Manoj Muntashir, Bageshwar Siblings, and Jaya Kishori during the quarter. We also staged 48 stand-up acts during this quarter.

This year, we are increasing our focus on the American market. A US tour with South maestro Ilaiyaraaja is currently underway, and in September, we plan to tour with the Punjabi superstar Arjan Dhillon, by the way, with whom we're also releasing an album.

It's a combined deal that we have done with Arjan. Globally, music labels are increasingly focused on monetizing superfans.

Luminate research shows superfans spend 100% more than the average listener, and 73% of them end up buying physical merchandise. Carvaan Live and our diaspora tours target exactly this segment in the Indian context: older, financially comfortable, willing to pay a premium for curated experience connected to the artists that they grew up listening to.

All this is going to help us further cement our position both in terms of being the revenue leader and help us improve our profitability. Our long-term belief in the potential of live events keeps getting reinforced every quarter, and we continue increasing our investment here.

As mentioned last time, we have put in a place a new vertical around brand partnerships, building an additional high-margin revenue stream alongside our licensing business by maximizing revenue from brands across music, live events, and short-form video. This quarter, we partnered with leading brands such as Hindustan Unilever, Godrej, Lux, etc.

Regarding our partner companies, Pocket Aces reached breakeven in financial year '26 and moved towards profitability. This year, we should be seeing further building on the profitability of Pocket Aces.

Bhansali Productions had no releases during the quarter. The next set of releases are planned in quarter four of this financial year.

Over the next few years, we will continue investing in new music content. This will contribute not only to our immediate growth, but also set the company on a long-term growth path.

For the music vertical, we maintain our medium-term guidance of 20% to 23% revenue growth and an annual music EBITDA margin guidance of 60% to 65%. That will be our opening statement, ladies and gentlemen.

We'll be very happy to take your questions now.

Congrats. Two questions.

First is on slide number 11. Here you have given the YouTube views.

For four quarters, that YouTube views was fairly stable, around 280 billion views, but suddenly quarter-on-quarter in Q1, we have seen a very sharp scale-up. Any one-off here which is driving this?

Related question on this slide is almost I think 14% of revenue comes from brand, 19% comes from brand tie-ups, and very strong brands, frankly speaking, you have given the names also. I just wanted to understand, is this a systemic improvement wherein brands are taking your legacy songs and that is giving you a lot of revenue?

If you could tell us on the team size which is targeting these kind of tie-ups with the brands and what is the outlook on this?

Now, I'll happy to share some give you answers which are not that specific. I can't put all our competitive advantages out in the public domain.

Yes, building up the brand vertical is a very conscious call that has been taken within the company. In fact, both three parts: the brand vertical as well as direct-from-customer vertical.

Traditionally, Saregama used to be only dependent on licensing from platforms. We are now, if you see our corporate presentation, and I think we've put in a quarterly also, we are now building these two verticals in a significant in a fashion.

On the brand side, the earlier way we people used to function at Saregama, brands were always there, but the way we approached brands was very, very different. Each of the verticals were managing revenue from brand within the vertical.

Live events were managing his own show, music was managing his own show, FilterCopy was completely separate. All that we have done is now built it as a joint team, which is managing all brand-related selling within the company.

This is this an independent team with a network across the country. When they go to a brand, they are able to fulfill majority of the requirements of the brand, specially if they want to go back and talk to Gen Z.

You were talking about catalogue. Again, I'm reiterating, please remember, 60% of Saregama's revenue comes from brand-new music, of which 45% actually comes from music released after 2020.

Some of the biggest hits that have happened right now in the recent times all belong to Saregama, and that music is also very much in demand as far as the brands are concerned. You had a question on YouTube.

Listen, those kind of fluctuations do keep on happening depending on which album is doing well at any particular time. When you're looking at this data right now, please once again, look at it on a 12-month rolling basis.

When the numbers go up, we don't we don't get very excited about it in a quarter. When the numbers go down a bit, we don't get very depressed about it.

What we are seeing right now internally is that on a 12-month rolling basis, the the both the streams on audio platforms and the views on the video platforms should keep on going steadily up, and thankfully, that's happening.

Sure. Last question, firstly, last three quarters, we have seen very good growth coming back for the company, and congrats on that, and good consistency, strong numbers.

Q2 also again music revenue, the base is soft, one is are you expecting good growth continue in Q2? More important question is what happens from Q3 because then generally your music revenue base becomes higher because of the last three quarters strong numbers.

If you could tell us in terms of growth numbers how you would expect from Q3? You have given out the specific content library, etc., but more from a numbers perspective.

Yeah.

It'll be a little wrong on our part to give guidance on a quarterly basis. We hold on to our short- to medium-term guidance that the music vertical, comprising of licensing, artist management, and retail, is going to grow between 20% to 23% year-on-year.

Okay. Thanks.

That's all from me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi team, thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a solid set of numbers. Vikram, you highlighted a few AI-led initiatives such as podcasts and video creation.

Could you also elaborate on the strategy behind these initiatives, what is the monetization roadmap, how should we think about the revenue model, what is the potential scale, what is the timeline to probably get to a stage where this becomes a meaningful contribution? See,

hopefully another couple of quarters later, we'll be in a better position to answer this question. Right now, we are all experimenting with the AI technology to see that can we create really good quality content at a very, very low incremental cost and at a speed that makes sense.

To give you flavor of what we are trying to do, one, on the music videos side, as you may be aware that the older catalogue that Saregama owns, we own all rights connected to the song except the right of the original music video. It was a movie of '60s and '70s.

At that time, original music videos were not sold to the music labels because there was no market for it. They were contractually not part of the deal that happened with the labels, and hence, they remained as a part of the movie negative and is controlled by whomsoever is controlling the movie negative.

That's one of the weaknesses, if I may say, we have in the older catalogue. If you want to do a recreation, if you want to sing, all those rights are sitting with Saregama, but not the original music video.

We tried to create brand new music videos, but the incremental cost of actually shooting a music video was not making sense. With AI, we are now reaching a position that a very true-to-real kind of a videos can now be created at a very, very low cost, which may starts making financial sense.

If that experiment works, you literally can do both the things: create brand-new videos with the original audio to talk to Gen X, giving them more contemporary-looking videos, and then you can also modify the audio a bit to make it sound more modern, that means change in the instrumentation while you're maintaining the composition, and attach brand-new videos to talk to Gen Z. Suddenly, we may have been in a very, very strong position taking care of the weakness that we only uniquely had, nobody else has this kind of weakness, because everybody else is a more modern-time music label.

We literally have all the music of the yesteryears sitting only uniquely with Saregama. On the podcasting part, we are realizing that there are models that we have seen across in the market, which gives us the confidence that the market is building up this traction for spoken word.

Our attempt is that how do we do spoken word in a unique fashion, and by unique, I mean we need to attach some of the biggest songs that we people own to this podcasting content, something nobody else can go back and do. If you are talking of a story of a 50-year-old man or a woman who's thinking of days gone by, while you're reminiscing those days, can I in your story also build in some of the biggest music connected to romance, or separation, or friendship into those podcast, and make it uniquely Saregama's, and then work out models right now licensing it to third-party podcast companies too?

Early stages, we are experimenting a lot at Saregama. I think one of the clear directions we have from our board is do a lot of experiments, do them small, fail fast, learn from it, and then only go back and scale it.

That's how we have attacked every product launched till now. That's how we are attacking our initiatives right now on AI-based ancillary content.

Pretty interesting. Would you want to call out the kind of investments that you would be making here, where would it sit, be expensed off, capitalized?

I think we've been also highlighting the use of AI in content acquisition processes. It's been a while since we have been doing that, I believe.

Any notable changes that you've seen in your content acquisition processes that you would like to call out?

See, that's a predictive AI part of it, which we people have been doing now four years have gone by. The real game changer in the room right now is generative AI.

Predictive AI has been there for some time in the system. All I can say on predictive AI, our hit-to-flop ratio is better than any competitor in the market, and I don't think we give credit to anybody, but our predictive AI models for that.

Any quantum of investments that you would like to call out?

These investments, whatever we people are going to be doing, if it's related to music, will be within this ₹300 to ₹350 crore. There's no additional investment one is asking for.

To be honest here, the investments numbers that are needed out here are far, far, far, far small. They're that small right now that at this juncture, there's no point even talking about it.

The cost of a music video, if it's done through AI, can be ₹70,000 also. The numbers are that small at this moment.

We want to test it out and see at scale that what kind of a music work, in which languages there's a higher adoption going in. We operate in 11 different languages.

We have catalogue sitting right now of 18 different languages. We're experimenting across both pop music, filmy music, as well as devotional music.

As the results start coming out and gives us more confidence to scale it up in a very big fashion, that's the time I'll be happy to call out investments needed.

Fair enough. Secondly, on the live events piece, could you walk us through the event pipeline for the rest of the year?

I was under the impression that Diljit's North America tour was scheduled this quarter. Anything on that, and what more is slated for next year?

Lastly, one question on accounting, what explains the sharp decline in other income this quarter?

Abhishek would be in a better position to answer this, but the fact of life is that the investments, the cash that we people had right now has been diverted towards specific investments of ours, namely Bhansali Productions, and that's why you see a reduction in the other income. You are asked me about the pipeline of the events that are happening here.

What I can tell you is completely which is things that are there in public domain. We have a big Krishna show going on with Manoj Muntashir.

We plan to do some 25 to 30 more of those. These are currently happening right now in Bombay, Delhi, we are moving into Indore, we have done successfully in Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Surat.

We want to expand it. We also want to take it to US.

We are currently, as we talk to you, we have just completed the first three shows of Ilaiyaraaja tour in US. We have already announced an Arjan Dhillon ka tour that we people will be doing later in September.

The Carvaan Live is a large enough property, which does in every city that we are in, we are doing minimum of four shows every month. Bombay itself is going to be seeing 48 such shows on a calendar basis.

The next season of Un40, our music festival, has already been announced and is being done on 13th and 14th of February in Bangalore. Some of the larger artist-based shows, the moment we people form it up and with artists, we have a confirmation that we can announce it, that's the time we'll make an announcement in the press.

Understood. Diljit tour didn't happen this quarter, is it?

No, Diljit India tour is planned sometime in quarter three, it's still tentative. We were involved with Diljit in the America tour also in a limited fashion, that's all I can mention.

The US tour was all under Saregama Live.

Understood. Maybe I'll take this offline in more detail.

Thank you so much. All the very best.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, sir. Am I audible?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, sir. My question was, could you provide an update on the integration of Pocket Aces and what is the revenue contribution and cost synergies that we have already seen on the consolidated earnings?

Over the next two to three years, how is this going to pan out? For

Pocket Aces, we've always been very, very clear. We made this acquisition of Pocket Aces because we believe that in the days to come, the biggest differentiator we can get as a music label is to build our reputation as the most efficient marketing machine to talk to Gen Z.

Biggest consumer of music is Gen Z. When a film producer or a big artist has to decide whether they should work with Saregama or somebody else, the real decision doesn't happen only in terms of money.

The bigger decision happens is that the producer wants his album to become hit so that the film becomes hit, and every artist wants his album to become hit so that they can sing more and more in the live events or the wedding circuit. For them, the marketing ability of a label is very, very important.

What Pocket Aces brings to the table for us is a unique thing. They are the biggest brand today among Gen Z in the country.

They between their entire social media presence are controlling to anything between 400 to 450 million follower and subscriber footprint across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Now, that's something that none of our competitors can at this juncture are able to compete on, which places us quite uniquely across languages in the country.

That does not mean that Pocket Aces is ever going to become a loss leader. Pocket Aces were able to achieve breakeven last year, and this year, we people are fairly confident right now that we will start seeing some amount of profit coming out of Pocket Aces.

Got it, sir. My another question was that our company owns one of the India's largest music library, and beyond this traditional streaming, where do you see the greatest untapped opportunity lies?

Sure, just a second, ma'am. Is it better, ma'am?

Yes, ma'am. Our Saregama company owns India's largest music library, correct?

Beyond this traditional streaming, where do you see the greatest untapped opportunity lies? In the sense of international licensing, or the AI-related licensing that you said, and gaming or short-form content, where do you see the monetization opportunity?

Ma'am, I'm not able to understand anything. I'm so sorry.

Disha, is it me only, or are you able to hear it?

Am I better? You're

sounding better.

Sir. I wanted to understand beyond the traditional streaming, where is the greatest untapped opportunity for Saregama company?

In the sense is it international licensing that you said that you wanted to tap into international businesses, or AI-related licenses, and gaming or short-form content that you see could be monetization opportunity for us?

Ma'am, the biggest revenue increase opportunities that we people see in front of us, within music, paid streaming is going to be the biggest one. If you look at some of our competing international labels, they end up getting anything between 50% to 70% of their revenues coming from the paid subscription.

India is at the just at the beginning of the start of that cycle. Just imagine the amount of headroom that all of us have in the industry, and with Saregama in a leadership position in India should be able to capitalize on it, hopefully better than anybody else in the market today.

Then we also see a great revenue maximization opportunity sitting in the short-form content. Today, most of the short-form apps are on a fixed-fee model with the music labels, with an assurance that with time, they are going to move on to a share of advertising opportunity, which means a revenue can really go up in the days to come.

Third are models like a video streaming companies like YouTube. If the GDP of the country keeps on steadily growing at the rate that it's growing, more advertising is going to flow in, and we people end up getting a straight share of the advertising revenue that these platforms end up making.

These are some of the biggest levers that we people have on the music side. There's one more on the music side is public performance.

It is an relatively untapped opportunity in India. By public performance, I mean whenever music is played at a commercial place, the entity needs to go out there and take a separate license, and that license money is distributed amongst the people whose music is played.

We believe that's a large opportunity which is not fully tapped in the market. That is also going to open up.

In developed countries, this is a big enough revenue line. We believe that should be able to give us another very, very big kick.

The moment I go out of music, short form on its own, what we people are doing with FilterCopy, I think that should become even larger. In the days to come, for any brand to talk to Gen Z is going to become increasingly difficult because Gen Z is not reading that much of newspaper, or is listening to radio, or is going on a conventional television.

The video content that they are watching are all through paid subscriptions where no ads are being thrown. If you want to talk to Gen Z, chances are you will have to catch these guys more and more on the short-form apps.

What Pocket Aces is uniquely bringing as strength to us is this footprint on the short-form app, either directly controlled by us or by some of the artists that we people are managing today. That also has a potential to become very, very big.

The third part of our business, which is live events part of our business, as a society, more and more we are glued on to our mobile phones, more we get start getting disconnected with people around, greater is the need for an affluent middle class or upper middle class to go out and spend some time enjoying themselves with other like-minded people, which makes live events as a huge opportunity in front of us. With all the right moves being made by the central and the state governments, who are also looking at live events in a very aggressive fashion, we believe in the days to come, infrastructure is going to improve a lot, and live events will become a substantial opportunity the way it is there in other parts of the world.

I hope I've answered your question.

Yes, sir. I have totally understood you.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking my question. I have only one question.

The question is when I analyze your segment

Okay. Now it's audible?

Okay. When I analyze your segment-wise revenue, the core music segment has grew by around 32% year-on-year, which is appeared to be a highest growth in the last eight quarters.

The same time, your peers has reported only 21% growth. Could you just help us to understand what is the key driver behind this outperformance in the core music segment?

All I can say, when you're looking at the core music, please keep in mind the way we report our music is licensing plus artist management plus retail. I started my opening statements by saying that our numbers are pretty healthy, but please judge us only on a rolling 12-month basis.

As I go forward and if I have to make a projection for the entire financial year or for the next few years, I maintain that the music will grow between 20% to 23% only.

Understand. That's it.

Hi. Good afternoon, Vikram.

Am I audible?

Yes, it's a little muffled. I can hear you.

Okay. Is it better now?

Yes, please go ahead.

Yeah. Vikram, my question was just continuing on the AI piece, in terms of how it is helping us revive both the old catalogue on the video format.

Now, if I look at the revenues from songs pre-2020, annually, the last three years have been subdued. Do you see this AI initiative of yours getting those growth rates back at least to the industry or beating the industry levels once you are completed with your experiment out there?

I am sorry, I have a disagreement on your analysis and what you derive from it. Catalogue revenue on an apple-to-apple basis every year has been growing at very high single digits or very low double digits.

When you see percentage, what it hides is percentage of the share of new content has gone up because new content is growing at a substantial pace. Catalogue cannot compete with performance of a Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, or a Stree 2, or a Dhurandhar.

On its own, catalogue is constantly growing. The only issue we people had faced, which was an industry-level issue we had all faced, is that in financial year '25 onwards, a lot of platforms in the country had shut down.

The platform continue to be there right now. That's what I'm saying apple-to-apple.

The platform that were there, whether it was a Spotify, or a Gaana, or a YouTube, or a Saavn, if I look our catalogue content, it's steadily being growing year after year. We have never seen on the catalogue side.

The bigger the question that you had asked, That's the entire attempt, that can we grow our catalogue at an even faster pace? We are realizing in India and globally, there is this complete resurgence of anything which is connected to nostalgia.

If you check out the Western music also, many of the artists who are very big in '60s and '70s and '80s are making very big comeback. Something similar is happening here.

If you see the number of older songs that end up being on Instagram, it surprises us also. There is constant work happening both in terms of marketing, as well as in terms of getting newer derivatives of the older content.

The end objective being can we further improve the amount of money that we can make from these assets that have been fully charged off. Understood.

Understood. My second question was in this time's presentation, you have given a breakup of revenue from different distribution networks, which is the platform revenue, the brands, and the direct-to-customer.

For brands and direct-to-customer, can you share year-on-year growth rates? Can you call that out if possible, just to get a sense how they are growing.

We'll be sharing this data right now, we'll be updating it on an annual basis I think the whole objective of sharing this data was that as a company, we are very conscious of the fact that at no juncture should we ever become over-dependent on any one way of making money, or one technology, or one partner. We are very well diversified if for whatever reason, there is a short-term hiccup that happens in any new technology or a business model, I'm sure it will affect us also, but it will affect us far lower than any of our competitors.

That's the whole objective. We have been trying to move the company in a more balanced portfolio approach over the last few years, and we thought we are now in a position that we are somewhere comfortable.

We want to further improve our numbers that are coming which are from brands and direct-to-customer without at all compromising on the numbers that we're doing from platforms, because that's our core business. You will see this data getting updated on an annual basis, that should give you some comfort.

Great, sir.

The other part is, just remember this, if I have to grow my revenue between 20% to 23%, you cannot have any of these verticals lagging down.

Correct.

Correct.

Correct. Just to get a sense of, yeah, how the revenue from different distribution networks are moving.

good afternoon, sir, and thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a great set of numbers. My first question is, sir, on the music EBITDA for this quarter, it has come off by 1% on a year-on-year basis.

I understand it's a small number, but I just want to understand the factors behind the music EBITDA taking into consideration that music as a segment has grown 40, 43% on a year-on-year basis. That's my first question.

When you are looking at year-on-year, also please just see the mix of the music segment. If you see the segmental results that we people have declared, you will see artist management piece is also growing, and artist management is always a lower margin.

It takes zero investments. Artist management part of the revenue is always the lower-margin part.

It's just as a mix change that is happening. On the core music licensing business, we don't see any change happening right now at the EBITDA level.

Obviously, as a margin level, there will be impacts on the short runs coming in as we people keep on increasing our content investment. There also, let me give you the comfort that the FY25, '26, '27, we had announced a ₹1,000 crore investment on the near music.

We were doing a step function increase in the amount of investments that we are making. Say from '28 onwards, you will see us now tempering the rate of growth in terms of the music investment.

We will still fight for a 25% to 30% market share, but we are almost reached there, and we are comfortable holding on to that position for some time. In the long run, you will see the EBITDA growth and the bottom line growth starting to catch up with the revenue growth that you're seeing on the music segment.

Understood. My second question is specifically again on the music net margins, again from the point of view of that the segment has grown at a much higher clip versus if you would have compared Q1 '26 numbers.

Is the content charge slightly more aggressive this quarter compared to Q1 '26?

I've told you, please evaluate us on a 12-month basis. Quarterly, we are trying to find trends in quarterly, there aren't any.

All depends which release got pushed to which particular quarter. That's why, please go back and evaluate us on a 12-month basis.

When our numbers look good, also I tell you 12 months, when our numbers are not looking good, then also I tell you 12 months. No,

understood, sir. I'll just rephrase my question.

If we had to compare FY26 net margins of the music business, and if we kind of extrapolate that for FY27, will it be fair to assume that we will incrementally be better in FY27 in terms of net margins versus FY26, even though we are spending 300, 350 crores this year on marketing and new content?

See, I think we have already gone out there and shared with you, see, I'm not answering your question directly. We have shared with you that our annual music EBITDA guidance is 60% to 65%, and I'm holding on to that.

Sir. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sir, thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on the good set of numbers. I just had one question regarding the artist management business.

For the past three quarters, we have followed the revenue run rate of 40 crores per quarter. Could you please help me understand what would be the key growth drivers for this business, and how do we see the revenue going forward for this?

Sir, regarding the EBITDA margins on this business, it is currently at 10%. Is there scope for expansion in this margins?

The growth rate that you're seeing in artist management, because we were at that stage of still building this entire vertical up, have been very, very rapid over the last few quarters. This is going to temper down, though I'm maintaining my bigger number: music vertical, which is licensing plus artist management plus retail, will grow between 20% to 23%.

We're not changing that guidance of ours at all on a short- to medium-term basis. That's the overall vertical part.

Since you asked some specific on artist management, the jumps have been more rapid because the vertical was getting built. It's reaching that kind of a stage where there'll be some stability that will be coming in as we move to another couple of quarters.

Artist management margins, yes, there is a lot of work happening there to see how can we go back and improve the margin percentages out here even further. Remember, what often happens here is that you go back and create a lot of content for the artist, the revenue that you're making from the content from the artist is sitting out there in the respective music vertical, while since you're investing that much on the artist, you also tell the artist that whatever revenue Mr.

Artist you make through brand endorsements or anything else, the revenue will flow through us, and we will keep our margins through that. That's the artist management business vertical as such.

We are now trying various ways in which we can help the artist even further to become bigger and stronger and charge greater amount of money from the market. As that happens, we should be able to go back and improve that improves our negotiation position also, and we should be able to improve by another few percent.

At this juncture, I'm not giving any guidance on by what percentage will we be able to go back and improve it. Currently, the focus is just get the full juice out of the artist management vertical in terms of it firing in its full capacity.

Okay. Just one question, could you please spell out what would be the revenue contribution in the music licensing segment for the subscription part?

Ma'am, we don't share that specific data. It's competition-sensitive data.

Okay. Thank you.

yes, sir. Thank you for taking my question.

Just wanted to get back on this revenue growth, right, 43%. Would that include the Haryanvi catalogue, so that's an acquisition growth?

What would be the organic number there, if any there's?

Ma'am, obviously, we are investing also in both organic, picking up newer organic content, as well as picking up the inorganic catalogues. Both the numbers are combined in this.

We are not declaring the numbers separately. That's a conscious call at any particular time when the team has got $100 to go out there and spend, they make a conscious call to decide whether it should be spent on a very strong catalogue, or should that be spent right now on organic opportunities in terms of newer content.

Both the things are evaluated, and we take a call. When we report the numbers also, and we evaluate ourselves also, and our board also evaluates us, it's all on the basis of the total amount of money spent.

Doesn't matter whether it's an organic or on catalogue.

Right, but the organic has this tailwind to it, right? It's already being listened to,

and Yeah.

My second question

Yeah. Please tell.

My second question would be the video segment, right, which still running the losses. When do we see a wind-down of that segment completely?

We had announced it in February and then again in May that it's a conscious call taken by the company that we will go ahead and start winding down our films business. Whatever films which are there in the pipeline, they're all going to get cleared up going forward.

We were in films business primarily to acquire the music of those films. That requirement of ours is going to be met through an investment in Bhansali Studios.

You will see the numbers are going to remain in this space only. You will see over the year video will be completely releasing all the films that are sitting right now on our balance sheet, maybe over the next three to four quarters.

Lastly it could be on the content cost. I know you've given us a guidance of 60 to 65% on the EBITDA margin, but anything that you can share with us on content cost directionally?

Is it going up this year, or No,

I have told you the amount of monies that we'll be spending on new music content, it will be between ₹300 to ₹350 crore.

Right, got that, sir. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. On the cash flow statement that you've published, Q4 presentation has a content spend of 186 crores, and the Q1 or the latest presentation has a content spend of 265 crores.

Could you just help me reconcile the difference in the two numbers?

I'll request Abhishek or Kuldeep to please take this.

Rohan, can you repeat your query once?

The presentation published this quarter has a in the cash flow statement has a 265 crore line item on the spend on new content, and Q4 fiscal '26 presentation, the cash flow statement has a content spend line item of 186 crores. Why is there a difference between those two?

Q4. Are you talking about Q4?

Q4. Q4 '26 and Q1 '26.

This by this 255 crore is for full year of last year, which we have made payment for the content acquisition.

Right. The same line item in FY26 in the Q4 presentation has a 186 crore charge against it, right?

Rohan, I don't have the presentation readily available with me. We'll take this offline.

Sure. Thank you.

Vikram ji, Vikram ji, good afternoon.

Sahab, sir.

Kaise hain aap?

Dua aapki, sir.

Sir, aapki bhi. How much earning, bifurcation old and new songs revenue, can you tell us how much revenue from new songs, how much revenue from old songs?

Ravi ji, if you see the part six in our corporate presentation, I think we released it around a week ago, we people have given by decade hamara composition har decade ke andar ki kitne gaane release hue hain on 180,000 songs, kitne gaane kis decade pe believe karte hain aur woh kya revenue contribute karte hain. The rough numbers are 60% of all the revenue that we made in music side came from the content release after 2000, of which 45% was after 2020.

Aapki chaheti catalogue company is also becoming the biggest new-age IP company.

Okay. Sir, this quarter, how much advertisement songs we have sold and revenue earned?

Sir, we don't get into those specifics. These are all very, very competition-sensitive information.

All of us compete in the same market, go to similar brands. All I can say is we are the only company today, first and the only company which has got a full flywheel going on.

We have a music business, we have an artist management business, we have a live events ka business also going on at the same time, and we have a short-form content ka business. When we go to the brands, we tell them ki agar aapko 25 se 30 saal ke logo se baat karni hai, hum aapko gaane ka license bhi de sakte hain, hum aapke liye gaane bana sakte hain, hum aapke liye short-form content jo Instagram pe jayega woh kar sakte hain.

Agar aapko hamare jo Gen Z se connected jitne bhi events ho rahe hain, chahe woh Un40 ho, chahe woh Bageshwar Sibling ki concert ho rahi ho, uske andar sponsorship bhi de sakte hain, which places us very, very uniquely for any brand in the market that wants to talk to the younger people. Right, right,

right. Sir, when this free song is stopped, how much subscription we can raise in our company according to your view?

Sir, this is a personal view of mine. I believe Indian market can easily turn into a 100 million subscribers at ₹100 per month if the free supply is done, and this can happen in a period of 12 to 18 months.

Hum logo ne Saregama mein yeh study karayi thi kuch had tak pehle tak, ki do the younger people are they comfortable with the idea of not listening to music? We got a very solid feedback ki yeh 30 ke niche ki jo janta hai, yeh music ke bina reh nahi sakti.

Now EY and IMI ne milkar 15,000 logo ki research karayi hui hai, it's available in public domain if you go back and search it, jiske andar 60 64% odd people have gone back and said ki agar aap music free band kar doge, then we will go out there and pay. I think there's a large opportunity sitting in.

Video companies ne hume sikhaya hai that Indian consumer ab waisa nahi hai ki woh kanjoosi karenge. Indian consumer ko agar aap value doge, toh Indian consumer is ready to pay.

We believe now all the right moves are happening, all the big international labels are also talking about this, the streaming platforms are talking about this, because for everybody, India is now the last big market which is yet to be tapped.

Right, right. You are saying wrong, sir, ke 30 ke niche wale bina song ke reh nahi sakte.

I am in 60, I cannot live without music.

Aap 60 ke ho gaye, dil se 30 ke hi ho, toh chalta hai.

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Congrats on good set of numbers, sir. My question is on the event and artist Like in the subscription business, you told 3% penetration, and you have a data to compare globally.

Isme, do you have any analysis, sir, how big this industry can be? That is my one question.

The second question is, we are managing so many artists, and some of them can really become very, very big. From a business model strength perspective, what is it which will hook these artists to us so that they don't go to competition, or they don't grow on their own?

These are the two questions I have.

Question is a very solid and a fair question. Isiliye main artist management ko kabhi bhi alag karke nahi bolta, artist management is connected to the content business that we are in.

Agar aap meri jitni bhi competing artist management agencies if you keep on seeing in the country, all of them are standalone artist management companies. Their job is to represent the artist, get them some work, whatever money comes in, they keep a percentage.

We are uniquely placed as the only company that also is investing in its own content. Hence, every artist that we are managing, we are also ensuring they get a chance to either appear in our music videos, or sing new songs right now for some of our brand new songs, or even appear in the music videos of FilterCopy, which ensures that we not only make help artist make more money, but we are also helping artist become bigger.

That's why if you see the churn which is happening from our catalogue, and yeh artist ke naam main declare nahi kar raha hoon, par bade artist ke naam aapko mil jayenge public ke andar hamare paas kaun pade hain. You are not going to find churn, because we are uniquely helping artist to become that much bigger.

Abhi main aapko example deta hoon, mere paas ek artist hain Viraj Ghelani. Now Viraj ke saath hum music bhi kar rahe hain, Viraj ke saare stand-up comedy ke live events bhi hum log karte hain, Viraj ke saath last year hum logo ne ek movie bhi kari hui hai, aur Viraj ko artist manage bhi hum hi karte hain.

Hamare paas ek young artist hain called Maahi. Maahi hamare liye gaane gaate hain, Maahi hamare music videos mein appear hote hain, Maahi FilterCopy ki series mein bhi appear hote hain, aur Maahi ke live events bhi hum log manage kar rahe hain, aur jab koi badi concert hoti hai like Himesh Reshammiya ji ki concert mein opening Maahi ne kari hui thi.

This is a unique flywheel ecosystem that we are able to offer to the artist, which in the country, honestly, nobody else has been in a position to do it. Hence, we consider artist management as not a separate vertical, but an integral part of our core content business.

Very interesting, sir. Glad to hear.

The other question was on the opportunity size, if you can give any colour on how big this opportunity can be, and where is India, and where are we standing? Sir,

artist management piece is the extent to which we are managing, it is bigger, but artist management is a normal part of majority of our international peers also. Toh jitni badi hamari music industry hoti jayegi, utni badi artist management industry hoti jayegi.

Artist management ka actually the real paisa comes in right now from weddings, corporates, and then brands. This is a large enough space.

Bigger those markets become, bigger is the fees these artist can charge. Hum apne content ke through in artist ko aur opportunity dete rehte hain ki woh aur bade hote chale jayein.

Jitne woh bade honge, utna woh charge karenge, jitna woh charge karenge, uski utni hamari percentage badhti chali jaati hai. As for live events is concerned, see, it's still an industry which is for all practical purposes has opened up in India only post-COVID.

Pre-COVID time ke andar live pe itna focus hamare desh mein nahi hota tha. Now with the Gen Z and the millennials, with this very clear cut spirit that they want to spend less on product, more on experiences, FOMO is becoming a very important part, people want to be seen at the right places and put their photographs of their presence in those places on various social media, all that is driving the live event space in a very, very substantial fashion.

Jury is still out ki yeh kitni badi ho sakti hai, but we believe live events may be the fastest growing vertical. The real challenge in the live events business is going to be as we go forward, not growing the top line, but improving the margin profile of the live events business.

That's why at Saregama, we are keeping a tight balancing act between working with artist on artist-based concerts, they drive revenue, but they are relatively lower margin products. We balance it with our own IPs that we people are generating.

IPs in the short run can have a pressure on the bottom line, because you have to establish the IPs and short run mein losses honge, but long run ke andar, they become very heavy margin products. That's why launch of a music festival called Un40, launch of this show called Krishna with Manoj Muntashir, launch of Carvaan Live property, in all these places, artist becomes incidental.

It's a show and the concept which is a primary thing which allows us to go back and improve our margins. Have I answered your question, sir?

Got it, sir. Yes, sir, surely.

Sir, last question is on the demographics of the audience which pays this subscription fee. I know we don't directly connect it's Spotify and all, but do you get this kind of demographic data in terms of age band, because you are stressing on Gen Z and the EY survey and all.

Because if it is the Gen Z audience, then the chances it'll get converted very, very soon. Do you have any demographics breakup?

I'll tell you right now. We don't get the data, but because we were getting the research done, we have all seen the research data coming in.

It's not that Spotify is sharing the data with us. From the research data is coming out very, very distinctly clear ki yeh mere jitne log hain na jo 50 saal ke upar wale hain, woh koi pay nahi karta hai, because yeh poori generation is baat pe grow kari hai hum sab ki hum log ke liye digital free hota hai.

The entire growth is coming from Gen Z and millennial. That generation is born with knowing that digital has to be paid for.

The older people always found digital to be the free way of consuming stuff. Changing them is going to take much longer.

The younger generation is very comfortable to pay as long it's making financial sense, it's affordable.

Great. Thanks, sir.

That's all I have. It's very admiring to see how you are building each of the new business pieces.

My best wishes, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

That's very kind of you.

Hi team, thanks for the follow-up. Vikram, the scale-up in artist management business has been impressive, also evident by the kind of discussions we've had in the call earlier today, with the segment today contributing about 17% revenues this quarter.

Now, as we look ahead, of course, from a growth rate point of view, you've mentioned that broadly, music retail, licensing, and artist will do a 20 to 23% CAGR. We have a few levers to drive this growth.

We onboard more artists, that's of course happening. Two more levers where you could give some more colour, which is increasing monetization or wallet share from the existing roster, or by underlying growth in the artist's earnings.

How should we think about these two drivers? You also highlighted that at some point, of course, till now growth was pretty strong due to a low base as the segment was being set up.

At what scale, what level do you see the segment sort of saturating?

Again, I don't see the wedding and the corporate market saturating. I'm sure many of you guys are also tracking the size of the wedding market, and one of the biggest that happen in each of these weddings in India is that artists are called out there to go out there and perform.

Pehle that used to happen for one function, now it's typically happening in two to three functions. I see a very long road ahead.

Please, Kavish, main fir repeat karunga, when you look at artist management vertical, see it as a byproduct of the main content business that we people are in. If we were not into content business, we wouldn't have been there in artist management vertical on its own.

It does not make sense because there is no clear moat that we have in artist management if we're a standalone company. Our moat is single fact that we are able to give opportunities to these artists to become big by appearing in our music, or videos, or live.

That's what is drawing some of the biggest artists to go back and work with us. Yes, we have taken a conscious call that we're going to stay completely away from Bollywood.

We are very comfortable working with non-filmy, actor-wala part, because we are not into films, we are not going to add any value to their life, that's why we're staying away from it. Everywhere else, we add serious value to their life, which is going to ensure a lower churn, and in the long run, improvement in margin.

Understood. Any comments, of course, we have to look at this in tandem with the other one.

Any comments on these two drivers that I spoke about, increasing wallet share from existing artists and or underlying growth in artist earnings? Lastly, on the competition bit, my understanding is that this space remains highly fragmented, with several emerging companies sort of competing for the same pool of talent.

Beyond these emerging or relatively small-scale players, do you also see competition from any larger player?

No, actually, there isn't any. There is serious competition which is sitting there, people representing film actors, but that's a space we are very, very clear we are not getting ourselves into.

Because anything where we don't have a moat, we will not get into. We don't make films, why should we go back and represent artists there?

We will not be able to help them become big. Answer to first question, I thought I gave, the more we will be in a position to help artists to become bigger, better will become our negotiation power from the artist to take a higher percentage of his commissions.

At the end of the day, unless the artist grows, I don't think we have the moral right also to go back and ask for more money. Our philosophically in the company is it's the artist first.

Help artist become bigger, then you can go out there and charge a higher commission, because in that case, it's not going out of his earning. He's also making more money, and he or she'll be very willing to go back and share a larger commission with us.

Got it. Very helpful.

Thanks a ton.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your faith and confidence in the board and the management team of Saregama.

Saregama's growth narrative will remain steady over the medium to long term, driven by rising digital consumption, both new customers entering the market and existing customers consuming more. With over 680 million internet users in India internet footprint in India, our cash reserves, a professional managerial depth, and access to the soundtracks of the best films, we can drive earnings not just for next two to three years, but for next 20 to 30.

India is at an early stage of global streaming curve, which is fortunately a feature and not a bug. It means our growth is going to be driven for a very, very long term.

We're not at the end of it like the Western market. Our growth is going to be driven by subscriber expansion as well as ARPU expansion, and more importantly, the format diversification will also start happening.

We are seeing in the more developed markets, there is a saturation in terms of subscriber expansion, there's limited upside available on ARPU expansion, they're working more on format diversification. We have all three opportunities open in front of us.

To summarize, we operate in world's most underpenetrated large music market with a high-margin structure, an own IP catalogue growing at 4 to 5,000 releases in year, an unmatched in-house entertainment flywheel, an extremely supportive and forward-looking promoter, and a strong balance sheet. Every global trend: subscription growth, ARPU expansion, superfan monetization, catalogue M&A, and beyond streaming diversification has a long runway in India than anywhere else in the world.

Saregama is a cleanest way to own these trends in the country. We look forward to your continued support.

Thank you, and good evening.