Sony Group is leveraging its music and movie entertainment divisions to create a joint company focused on developing investment ventures for media talent in India.
The new venture, to be named Sony Entertainment Talent Ventures India (SETVI), will draw from a “vast pool of commercial talent and star-power in India to build investment opportunities, partnerships, metaverse solutions and more,” the company says in a press release.
Sony Music Entertainment is already a leading record label in India, with a strong presence in Bollywood and Tamil OST, across multiple genres that include national and regional pop. Sony Pictures Entertainment includes Sony Pictures Networks, a broadcast division with over 700 million viewers from 170 million households in 8,000 cities across India; Sony Pictures International Productions, a film production studio; and Sony LIV, a growing digital streaming and OTT (over-the-top) business.
The joint venture “will leverage our expertise, deep local relationships and global reach to give talent the potential to scale, become household brands and fully realize their creative and commercial potential,” Shridhar Subramaniam, Sony Music’s president of corporate strategy and market development in Asia and Middle East, says in a statement. “The digital revolution and India’s unique start-up culture bring huge opportunities.”
To lead the joint venture company as CEO, Sony has selected Vijay Singh, who ran Fox Star Studios from 2010 to 2020. Singh also brings music experience from his time as managing director of Sony Music Entertainment India from 1996 to 2002.
“Our ambition is to work as advisors to talent to build their wealth and legacy and unlock the best monetization opportunities for them in India and the world,” Singh says in a statement.
Subramaniam, Sanford Panitch, and N.P. Singh (managing director and CEO, Sony Pictures Networks India) will comprise SETVI’s board of directors.
The film-music joint venture follows news made official in December that Sony Pictures Network India was merging with Zee Entertainment Enterprises to create India’s second-largest entertainment network by revenue and a regional content giant spanning film, TV and streaming.
India was the 17th largest market for recorded music revenue in 2020, posting $180 million in revenues, an increase of 4.9% over 2019, which was slower than the 7.4% growth rate for the world, according to the IFPI’s “Global Music Report.” The market had an 85% jump in streaming revenues, mostly due to a 34.5% boost in ad-supported audio streams.
While India has lagged other major music markets in growing subscription-supported streams, the country is expected to have the third-largest number of high-income households after the U.S. and China by 2030, and for its consuming class to double in size, according to a 2021 report by consulting firm McKinsey. (Consuming class is defined by spending more than $11 a day.)
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