REPUBLIC RECORDS HIRED DAMION PRESSON AS SENIOR VP ARTIST RELATIONS. ATLANTIC RECORDS ANNOUNCED PLANS TO RELAUNCH ATCO RECORDS UNDER PETE GANBARG. WARNERI
N THE EARLY 2000S, DURING THE
heyday of the cable TV business, Rishi
Malhotra was a young vice president at
HBO, charged with figuring out how to
sell on-demand programming. Over several years,
he turned HBO On Demand into a $100 million
business. “One of the things I learned from HBO
was that really premium, unique content helps
build a brand,” he says, “and it’s something people
will pay for.”
In 2008, Malhotra decided to take his skills to
Saavn, a business-to-business company that dis-
tributed Indian music to platforms such as iTunes
and Amazon. By 2010, Saavn had transitioned into a
streaming service, and in 2018, it was renamed Jio-
Saavn after Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries
acquired the company and merged it with JioMu-
sic, the streaming service run by telecom Reliance
Jio. Now, says Malhotra, JioSaavn has between100 million and 200 million monthly active users.
Malhotra took over as Saavn’s CEO in 2014, just
before mobile data rates plummeted, making India
one of the most competitive streaming markets in
the world. Since 2019, local champions JioSaavn,
Gaana and Wynk Music have competed with
startups like Hungama, as well as global titans
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music and
YouTube Music, for a share of the Indian market
and its population of 1.3 billion. In 2018, India’s
recording business generated $156 million in rev-
enue, according to global music industry organi-
zation IFPI — a 24.5% increase from 2017 — and
streaming accounted for 70% of that total.
Malhotra now leads a team of over 300, divided
among the company’s offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru
and Gurgaon, India; New York; and Mountain View,
Calif. Amid the necessary travel, he makes it a prior-
ity to squeeze in five hours of guitar practice everyweek. The father of three says it helps keep him con-
nected with his creative side, which he developed
playing in bar bands in Nashville, where he grew up,
and in St. Louis as a Washington University pre-
med student. “In today’s age, you have to be a smart
creative,” he says. “You have to look at processes,
management and [profit and loss] — but you also
have to have a creative touch in how you lead and the
kind of work culture you create.”FROM THE DESK OF
RISHI MALHOTRA
CEO, JioSaavn
BY AMIT GURBAXANI
PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHRIS CALLOWAYMalhotra
photographed at
JioSaavn in New
York on Feb. 18.“ FOR US, INDIA IS NOT A
SECONDARY MARKET LIKE IT
IS FOR SPOTIFY AND APPLE.
THIS IS OUR MARKET.”
—MALHOTRA
22 BILLBOARD • FEBRUARY 29, 2020