Carvaan transitioning to a platform: Saregama India

"Carvaan is transitioning from being a product with only one-time margin to a platform with upfront margin and recurring advertising and subscription revenue," stated Saregama India, in an investor filing on Thursday.

Carvaan became popular in the past three years as a portable hardware product that was designed like a traditional radio device, but stored a digital library of music.

"Carvaan sales was adversely affected due to COVID (2nd wave) lockdowns," Saregama said in its investor presentation dated July 22, 2021. "All major stores were closed, and e-commerce platforms were delivering only essential commodities."

Carvaan clocked sales of 45,000 units in the first quarter of financial year (FY) 2022, above the 15,000 units a year ago when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a nationwide lockdown.

Sales recovered to 138,000 units and 110,000 units in the quarters ended December 2020 and March 2021, respectively. The company said podcast stations listenership continues to grow on Carvaan 2.0, and a new variant of Carvaan Mini Kids has been launched.

Saregama aspires to be a "pure-play content company capitalising on the global content consumption boom driven by the ever-increasing digitisation."

Its YouTube views from 25 owned channels stood at 2.46 billion in Q1 FY2022, compared to 1.51 billion a year ago. The company already partners music streaming platforms like Gaana, Saavn and Spotify, apart from broadcasting (Viacom18) and video streaming platforms (Disney Hotstar).

It clocked Rs 107.7 crore of consolidated revenue in the first quarter of FY2022. While this was a 31.6 percent improvement over the same quarter last year, the revenue declined over 24 percent sequentially.

Saregama's Q1 profit margin of 25.2 percent was marginally lower than the 26 percent in the March 2021 quarter but higher than the 19.2 percent a year ago. Its licensing revenue of Rs 283.9 crore in 2020-21 has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4 percent in five years.