Jay Mehta, Managing Director of Warner Music India & SAARC, discusses the company’s M&A strategy in South Asia and how India will produce the next big global wave for music. He believes that the gap between the two genres will close, pointing to the opportunity in subscription music streaming. Mehta joined Warner Music Group in April 2020, following several years at Sony Music.
WMG has struck deals with Bollywood specialist Tips Music and Punjabi music company Sky Digital India. WMG’s M&A moves include a strategic investment in JetSynthesys’ Global Music Junction in April, acquisition of India-based artist management and live events company E–Positive in October 2023, and buying a majority stake in digital media and music company Divo in February last year. Mehta predicts that Punjabi-language music will be the next global breakout genre after K-pop and Afrobeats.
Warner is seeing success in India and globally with frontline Punjabi-language artists like Diljit Dosanjh, who signed his first major label partnership with WMG in March 2022. Dosanjh is becoming one of the biggest superstars of the Indian diaspora, with evidence of his global appeal arriving in April when he performed the biggest-ever Punjabi concert held outside of India at the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, Canada. He plans to replicate the model in other countries but explains that Canada was chosen as the first location for the JV because it’s where a “big cultural revolution is happening in terms of content creation” in the global South Asian diaspora.
More competition means that these artists are generating a lot of interest worldwide, which is important. It’s a big positive takeaway for Warner Music that many big US labels are now interested in signing South Asian artists. These global hits were driven by a large number of streams from India, with approximately 220 million audio streaming users, which is just 40% of the country’s total YouTube users. At such low levels of penetration, India is turning out the domestic streaming numbers [to produce] a truly Global Top 25 on Spotify.
India is growing much faster than large parts of the world, so even at these big numbers and big base, there’s a market that is going to multiply. And there’s a big list of artists who are making truly international music of very good quality. India is going to produce the next big global wave for music.
Circling back to Warner Music’s positioning in India and South Asia, Mehta has signed a few partnerships and made a few investments since 2020. M&A is important because the larger aim is to be a top label in the country within the first five years of launching. The company has acquired a company called Divo, one of the biggest media companies in the south of India, and has a big presence in Punjab through acquisitions and a partnership with Sky Digital. They invested in the biggest central India company called Global Music Junction, effectively having some sort of presence in 19 of 28 states in the country on the back of M&A.
In the near to long term, there will be a big, major South Asian music wave throughout the world, with these being the best times for South Asian music and artists.
