Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Saregama India Limited Q1 and FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Emkay Global Financial Services Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please ping the line operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pranav Kshatriya from Emkay Global Financial Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity. We have with us today Mr. Vikram Mehra, Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, CFO, Mr. Anand Kumar, Group Head, Investor Relations, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, Executive Director, Investor Relations. I shall now hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you all.
Good morning to all of you people. This quarter saw an operating revenue of INR 206 crore and a PBT of INR 51 crore. This specific quarter was affected by multiple factors, primarily being a lot of movies that were planned for quarter one actually were postponed. As always, I request all of you to evaluate us on a rolling 12-month basis and please not on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Let's start with the first vertical, music, which comprises licensing and artist management. This segment grew by 12% on a year-on-year basis. We are confident of achieving 22% - 23% annual growth on a medium-term basis under the music vertical. We have been maintaining that position in the past, and we continue maintaining this position. This quarter saw the release of successful Tamil film album, Thug Life, with two of the songs topping Spotify charts.
This is a Kamal Haasan movie and A.R. Rahman and Mani Ratnam movie. Two Telugu songs from films Court and Hit 3 also fared very well and topped Telugu Spotify charts. Similarly, songs from the Bengali film, Dhoomketu , has been hitting YouTube charts. Our other big release was Jacqueline and Neil Nitin Mukesh starrer Digital Music Show called Hai Junoon , which came on JioHotstar. This had a great combination of a lot of new original songs as well as recreations of some of the biggest songs that Saregama owns. On the non-film side, we continue our focus and release a lot of songs, but primarily of our own exclusive artists like Mahi, Keshav, Gujarati Superstar, Jignesh Barot. Overall, from the release of thousands of original and premium recreations across Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali languages.
I think a big highlight, which is more of July, but I want to share with you something we are very, very happy and proud about, is the acquisition of the biggest and the most popular Haryanvi music catalog under the company name called NAV Records. There are 6,500 tracks across Haryanvi, Punjabi, Ghazals, Devotional, and Indie Pop . Some of the songs here have a YouTube viewership which is higher than even the biggest song that Saregama owns today. Haryanvi always used to be an area where Saregama didn't have strength, so it helped us in filling that gap beautifully. This acquisition also includes popular YouTube channels like NAV Haryanvi and Nupur Audio, with an overall 24 million subscriber base. This deal will be funded entirely through our QIP money.
We are still in the process to operationalize it, and I expect the revenues will start flowing through our books from quarter three onwards. Overall, our spend for the new content for this year will be somewhere between INR 350 crore-INR 380 crore. Most of our big releases are scheduled at this juncture between Q3 and Q4. This includes Ranveer Singh's, Dhurandhar , Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Love & War, Dharma's movie, which is a Kartik Aaryan starrer, Main Tera, Tu Meri, Tu Mera, Main Teri, Telugu superstar's Nani's Paradise, Tamil's ultimate hero Dhanush's Idly Kadai , Kannada superstar Darshan's Devil, and in Tamil also Sivakarthikeyan's Parasakthi . With all these investments that we people are doing, we continue with the guidance of a five-year payback series. After that, we have another 55 to 75 years in front of us to keep on reaping the returns.
This quarter, which is April to June, was our second quarter which faced the job pressure of Airtel Wynk floating around November last year. These are the last people who had to shut down or move from free to pay. This cycle should get over by the time we people are in the Q3, middle of Q3. On the YouTube side, quarter one saw some pressure due to advertising stopping primarily during the Indo-Pakistan war, but it normalized by early June. As I stated earlier, I think the biggest impact was when I counted a lot of movies getting pushed to the later quarters. Unlike last year, where Q1 saw our biggest releases of the year, we had Tauba Tauba songs hitting out there in Q1. We had Chamkila, which was a massive movie of Imtiaz Ali and Diljit Dosanjh. That had hit us in quarter one.
And Kalki, which was Prabhas' movie in Telugu, and Amitabh Bachchan was also starring in that. All that had hit in Q1. Suddenly, when you do a quarter one to quarter one, these kind of issues keep on happening. That's why I keep on requesting and urging all of you that please see us on a rolling 12-month basis. You get a far better picture. Artist Management, the newest vertical under music monetization, wherein artists are made popular through IP releases, and then we monetize these artists by booking them for live events, weddings, and brand endorsements, from which Saregama gets a share. During this quarter, 25+ influencers and artists were added, taking the total count of the artists that we are managing in the company to 230+, and between these 230+ artists, they have a 200 million follower base on Instagram and YouTube.
Our artists that we are super proud of, who became part of the family, were Dr. Kumar Vishwas, a poet right now of Ultimate Fame. As our investment in new content grows, these artists are going to become bigger and bigger. We believe that with digital advertising growing at 15% per annum, the biggest beneficiary of these will be these artists' own influencers. As the number one agency that is representing these artists and helping them grow, we stand to benefit in a short to medium run. On the video front, this was a softer quarter. We had only one Malayalam release in which we incurred a small loss. Also, at a digital series, Find the Salvi , once again with our own artist called RJ Karishma . The series came on JioHotstar. On a full-year basis, we are confident that this video vertical will also result in profits.
On the live event side, Saregama Live successfully launched a Cap Mania tour in 2025 with Himesh Reshammiya. It started with the first event happening in Bombay in Q1, and this was followed up by two household shows that we did in the month of July in Delhi. Whenever you start a new tour, the first one or two events end up losing money because you are still trying to go out there and establish a show. The marketing spend is disproportionately high right now in the beginning of it. We believe as the show keeps on progressing, and similarly with the scene of Cap Mania , that we plan to take it to multiple cities and maybe outside India too. Everything like the Diljit Dosanjh spot, we expect this tour also with time to start becoming more and more profitable.
The other shows that we did right now were the stand-up comedy acts that we are doing with our own artist, Viraj Ghelan i, under the name That's So Viraj! The successful shows in financial year 2025 , and we followed it up with four additional performances in Bombay and Gujarat during Q1. Our new retail strategy for Carvaan has been fully rolled out, whereby we are retailing it primarily from e-commerce and modern trade stores. The team size has been cut dramatically from 150 to 120 now. While the volumes and revenues have shrunk, the profitability margins have started improving. We expect by the time we hit the end of the year, we should be writing mid-single-digit margins on Carvaan, which is back to the good old days. Over the next few years, we will continue investing in new music content aggressively.
This will not only contribute to the immediate growth numbers of the company, but more importantly, future-proof the company by putting it on a long-term growth path. Amidst all this, we are maintaining at the company level our adjusted EBITDA guidance of 32% - 33%. Saregama's growth narrative will continue to be steady in the medium to long term, courtesy of the massive increase in the digital consumption of this country, both in terms of new customers coming into the market and existing customers consuming more and more. Every year this trend is becoming stronger. We now have a 400 million internet footprint.
Combine that with our cash reserves, professional management depth, and access to the soundtracks of the best movies, we believe that we will not only be able to maintain our earning guidance for the next two to three years, but hopefully for the next 20 to 30 years. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone phones. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use hands up while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Harssh K Shah from Dalal & Broacha . Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. A few questions from my side. Firstly, if you could kind of help us understand what challenges are held with the overall industry kind of facing, other than certain music apps kind of starting shop. Basically, my question is coming from the point of view of YouTube. I acknowledge that you mentioned that Q1 had some challenges. In general, are we seeing a lower ad spend, a lower number of employees might run on music videos, which kind of impacts our monetization? Or is it something extremely temporary? Some thoughts on that?
Yeah. We are not seeing any headwinds right now on YouTube. What happened in the month of May happened not just on YouTube, but across every media. When the country is in that situation right now, you typically have advertising that stops on a temporary basis. I think it's very expected that these things don't happen regularly. Q1 is typically weaker for YouTube because most of the advertising goes to television behind IPL. T hat's a Q1 phenomena in general. This year got worse to some extent because of this problem in the month of May. June, we are seeing the numbers coming back. If you see the views data in the month of June, it is very clearly available, you can also track it on the channels combined. We are in a pretty healthy state once again.
Got it. Okay. Ultimately, we hear everything from every single thing.
I wanted to interrupt you because
We are able to hear you. Your voice is very clear.
Yeah, is it better?
Yeah.
Yeah, my question is on the Video Segment. I acknowledge that you mentioned that this year we will not start making profits. Are you talking about the exit earnings, or maybe on the full year we will see profits?
Yes.
Because you are totally talking here.
We people, see, video business again cannot be seen on a quarterly basis. Please see it as an annual basis because a lot depends on which quarter what releases are happening. Unlike our music business where we are aggressively investing, in the video business, we follow our extremely cautious approach. That's why we have shared our internal guidelines that at any particular time we will not be locking more than 18% of our total capital employed across the entire video and live segment business. We approach this part very cautiously. Whatever positive and negative will happen, you will see very, very low swings in the numbers as we will go forward. There are more titles coming in in the later part of the year, and you will see us on the profit side by the time we people go back in the financial year in the video segment.
Got it. Is there any specific reason why the capital employed within the Video Segment has gone up by almost 95% on a year-on-year basis?
It's just a temporary phenomenon right now. By the time you go into the end of Q2, Q3, the number is going to fall down once again. If you just go back and look at the capital employed on the Video Segment across the last two, three years, you will see the in-between swings that go back and come in when you go back and invest, but the monies may have just come out there in a week after the quarter gets ended. I think the right way for you to look at right now is how we are exiting the year compared to the last year. This is a temporary phenomenon. It will all get squared out.
The key part is at no juncture will the capital deployed across the entire Video Segment, which is films, TV series content, video series content, short-form content, all segments combined plus Live Events, ever receive more than 18% of the total capital deployed. We are far lower than that at this moment.
Got it. Lastly, any update on the profitability status of the Pocket Aces Maybe if you could quantify the amount of losses we may have faced in Pocket Aces this quarter? We can talk in terms of profitability, the kind of the positive. Yeah.
This year, I have stated this when we declared the annual results. I spoke to all of you guys in the month of May. This financial year, Pocket Aces is going to turn profitable. I think we have a very fine management team out there who are doing everything cutting on muscle. We are going out there and improving our revenue stream so that we end up building and further building up the extremely strong brands that we people have within Pocket Aces: FilterCopy, Dice Media, and Cloud, and make it as a formidable source. I und erstand your concern and give you the comfort that by the end of the year, you will have Pocket Aces turning profitable.
Got it. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry, your voice is not clear.
Sir, your voice is not clear.
Yeah, is it better now?
Yes, it can.
Yeah. Yeah. Good morning. My question was just continuing on the Video Segment. It's been now more than eight quarters that we've not seen significant profitability there. At this, Pocket Aces get classified under the Video Segment, or there is a split between video and music. How do we look into this area?
So Pocket Aces, the artist management part right now is sitting, the biggest part of Pocket Aces is in the video. I think that should answer your question.
Okay. The video is then driven by Pocket Aces now.
I want to clarify just a minute. I want to clarify with you that the loss that you're seeing in this quarter is not on account of that. It's on account of the only film that we people released. We had some amount of losses in that film. We understand also video segments are still early days for us. Unlike the film business right now that we have been running for 125 years now, this is still a relatively new business for us. That's why we are doing a lot of experiments, but small experiments, learning from our mistakes and going up. You're never going to be seeing any dramatic losses happening out there on the Video Segment. That much I can assure you.
Great. Great. Vikram. My second question was more a clarification. Do we, on a per-stream basis, make more in YouTube versus the audio platforms? That was the understanding we got from some clients here.
This is not the ability because this is now getting into specific deals that I have with YouTube versus the deal I have with some of the streaming services.
I don't need the number, just if it is higher or lower.
Again, I give a very second-hand answer. A lot depends right now on the kind of content we are putting up. Yes, there are cases at times right now where you do end up making a little higher, but there are also a painful number of cases where YouTube is far lower than what you make from streaming. The big difference in YouTube philosophically is that what percentage of your total views are coming from the European and the American world. Because the number of views a music video gets from those markets, we get a share of advertising that is either in dollars or euros or pounds. That's the advantage that one ends up getting. There are languages and specific kinds of videos which go very well out there on YouTube.
There are other languages which are primarily spoken by people in India, and you don't have too many Indian-origin people of that language sitting outside. Internally, we have a very clear benchmark that we people work with for every language and within the language or genre of music that we are creating, that what is the profile of that across each of the partner platforms that we work with. It's not just YouTube. It's YouTube versus Apple versus Spotify versus Saavn versus Gaana versus others.
I'll just tell you where I'm coming from is more from, you know, the distribution network that we are creating. It shouldn't be the case that, you know, we create this distribution network, and when the audience comes back to us to listen to the music, it comes through a platform that is giving us a lower realization versus a platform which is giving us a higher realization. That was my only clarification I needed. Is that the case happening?
I will not talk about specific platforms, but I can tell you all the platforms so far, whether it's a video streaming platform or the audio streaming platforms, are making a strong effort to take their customers towards paid subscription. If you see whether it's YouTube or Spotify or Saavn, all of them are making an effort right now to move people behind the paid one. I like to believe that the revenue yield is going to start going up on each of these platforms. It's not going to remain specific to only one or two platforms. A little bit of a concern for us are the short-format apps that are there in the country right now, which are still there on a fixed fee for all of us.
We believe with time, maybe on a medium-term basis, that should open up, and we should start getting a share of advertising there. That's a very different line of business. On the audio and video side, I think paid economy is starting to get into both of them.
Okay. With the short format, they were not able to compensate for the loss that we have seen from minimum guarantees from these platforms which are shut down. They would be too small today? Is that a fair assessment?
Short format was there when these free platforms and minimum guarantees were there. The short format is not a new phenomenon. You have primarily two big international apps in India, which are Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Some of these local guys who jumped into it have started going slow. These guys have been there right now for the last five or six years. We believe that a big breakout may happen in the short- format app when, like some other international short format apps, these two also start sharing a part of their advertising revenue with the content creators. YouTube Shorts has already started doing that in the non-music category. We believe it will eventually come to music also. I'm going to put my bet on a short to medium- term there. I'm not putting my bet on an immediate basis that it will happen.
Fair enough. The advertising budget that we see in the industry at the macro level is fixed. For that budget, there are different forms of content that are competing. Do you see music as seeing objects in the form of content from different forms of content that are emerging, which is playing down the growth in the music industry at 10% versus digital advertising growth, like you mentioned, at 15%?
In a way, music has an unfair advantage out here because the money that you win when you consume content on any digital media, whether you're consuming music video, I understand, or listening to a song, which is hardcore music, but every time you're watching a digital series, there's a high probability that a song somewhere has been added to that. It may be as simple as a telephone ringing and the ringtone of that telephone being Toba Toba, or it may be somebody humming Mere Sapno Ki Rani Kab Aayegi Tu in part of the video series itself, or even if somebody is walking right now and there's a Saregama song going on. In every case, we people end up generating revenue.
We like to believe right now that as more and more people jump into the digital bandwagon and start consuming more content, we will get a larger and larger share of the advertising revenue. As India moves from advertising to a paid economy, which has happened in every other part of the world and has started happening out there on the video OTT side, and before that happened with the digital cable and the DTH side, we believe right now that in times to come, this share of this value of activity will keep on going up. That's the reason as a company that is investing so heavily in content because we believe we will be able to monetize a lot on a short-term basis itself.
Got it. I'll come back in the queue for more queries. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Govindarajan Chellappa from CSIM. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, we've been talking about the shift to subscribers in the music space for the last two years now. Relative to what you had expected, how has been the pace of the shift? Just looking from the numbers, it doesn't look like it's moved as fast as you would have anticipated two years back. If that's the case, what is holding it back?
The numbers are a misleading part because when you look at the actual numbers, you are seeing numbers not growing that steeply because the free business minimum guarantees are all going away for all of us. While the paid economy is taking up, remember in the last three to four, last what, 30 months, we have Wynk shutting down.
We have Resso, which is a ByteDance space, the part right now that's shutting down in the country. Hungama is shutting down in the country. Gaana is going right now completely from free to paid economy, and hence all of us are taken out of MG. Four platforms in India have shut down. In spite of that, companies like Saregama are still showing growth. I'll not be able to show growth unless there was genuine revenue coming up. Actually, subscription has started showing its head. A year back, I remember somebody asking me, and I said, "I'm seeing green shoots." Those green shoots are actually becoming like saplings. We believe give it another four, six quarters, you will see right now subscription becoming the primary way in which people consume content.
I mean, if you can give some numbers at the industry level, what proportion of, let's say, consumers are now paying OTT plus YouTube together?
What I'll urge right now is it's wrong on my part to give numbers on the industry part. There are various industry reports that you can go back and look at. You need to, I think, just empathize with one thing and think of what I shared with you. Out of these, what, eight platforms that there were in India, four platforms have shut down. In spite of that, companies like Saregama are growing in revenue. I can't grow under streaming businesses also growing along with it. Streaming is a large part of whatever revenues that we people make. It will give you the comfort that, yes, some of the free business has shifted from these four shutdown platforms to the other two platforms, which are Spotify and Saavn. The larger number we people have seen growth rates coming is from the subscription side.
Okay. My second question is on videos. I mean, I know the amounts are small, but it does take a lot of management's time and bandwidth in running a business like this. We've been doing this for the last many years, since mid-2010. At what point do you take a call that it is working or not? It's no longer an experiment, right? It's been experimental.
No, no. So listen, what is the video part? The series business that we people run right now actually is in auto mode. Not even 2010. We have been doing this from year 2000 onwards right now when we made series for Sun TV. That business is a well-oiled machine that just keeps on running. We run two to three series in a year. Most of them go to anything between 3,000 episodes- 4,000 episodes in a time too. They just run on their own. That's the power when you have strong enough number two and number three levels built into the company. I can assure you, and you can one day just come out there and monitor my time or the Senior Management's time. Less time goes out there in the series business.
Yes, here at the short-form content business that we people run and the Filter Copy, which is a relatively new vertical within the company, once again, that turns out at that fast pace that the amount of management time that's going in it right now is relatively limited. We inherently believe that there is potential on the video side. On both perspectives, video is video on its own. The consumption is going up, and we don't want a situation where we don't have a play on the video side at all. Most international labels and all of my competitors in India have a video play also going on. Second, video also becomes a great source to get brand new music and also to monetize that existing music or promote existing music by pushing that music as part of the video assets that are going out.
Again, let me give an example of Filter Copy. One of the amazing parts that the Filter Copy management team and the music team out here have done together is to ensure that the millions of views which are getting generated on Filter Copy content, almost all of them have some old song of Saregama which gets played. What it does is to build fresh recall for the older content of our past, and we see immediately a causal effect relationship getting built that people listen to that content on a Filter Copy video and then go to Spotify or YouTube or a Saavn or an Apple and add that song as part of the playlist. We believe there is a strategic play right now that we people have right now on the video side. We were never into big-budget Hindi films.
On our own, we have no plans right now within Saregama as a company to go into these big-budget Hindi films. We will remain wherever the budgets are under control. The actors are ready to come on the back-ended price so that the risk that we people end up taking is on a relatively lower side.
The last question was on working capital. There's almost an INR 210 crore increase in working capital during the quarter, and it's across all items. Inventory has gone up a lot, receivables have gone up, and payables have fallen. I know there is some quarterly valuation, but this just does seem to be a lot more than what you normally see from one quarter to another. Any particular reason for that?
Hi, Govind. Pankaj, this side .
As you rightly mentioned in your question, there are quarterly patterns on this working capital side. If you just pick up even fast numbers, you'll see quarter two expands. It will be completely different to quarter one. That is one answer to your question. Secondly, as we said, on the films side, on the video side, there are some very exciting projects that are lined up. We have made some investments over there. That's also sitting part of in our inventory, the investments made over there. Hence, you see the jump in the inventory and the receivables. As we move forward, when you see Q2, Q3, a lot of these things will get normalized.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we move towards the next question, we would like to remind participants you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Anand Bhaskaran from KSEMA Wealth Management Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes sir.
I just want to know your clear indication of the way things are going in the segment revenue side. Right now, I guess music is contributing 69%, Artist Management 11%, video 17%. I just want to know an overall breakup of what you see going forward for FY 2026 and FY 2027. What would be the main driver for the revenue out of these four segments?
For us, out of these segments right now, we have shared our revenue from growth projections. On a short to medium-term basis, the music business, which is licensing plus Artist Management, that's a music business within Saregama, that should be growing at 22% to 23% CAGR on a short to medium-term basis. The video business is expected to be along the lines of more 24% - 25%. On a medium-term basis, our EBITDA guidelines are 32% - 33%.
Okay. Okay. Okay. That's all the questions I have right now. I'll get back to the queue for a moment.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ravi Naredi from Naredi Investment. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Vikram. G. Ravi, how are you?
All good, sir. Happy to watch.
Really? Wow, wow. So nice. Sir, you mentioned two big players like Google used our song in their advertisement. How much revenue we earned there? It is more than INR 5 crore in a year.
Sir, the monies that we people make from our brand using our in their ads or music is substantial enough. I'll not be in a position to give you a number here when comparatively sensitive data. We compete with other people also. It's a substantial enough part. In fact, we have a dedicated team that just looks after that.
Okay. No problem, sir. Nowadays, how is content cost to you behind this? Because a lot of Bollywood movies are there, sir. Are you finding it difficult to acquire content cost at a comparatively low rate?
Sir, the content cost keeps on moving up and down at times between various languages. I think what will give you comfort is all of us, starting from me to everybody down, is the first criteria on which our performance is evaluated within Saregama is five-year payback period for all the content we acquired during the year. Even if it comes, the market share falls, revenue numbers can move here and there, this criteria of five-year payback period can never move. Whatever we people do in terms of content acquisition, we do keep in mind that we don't end up overpaying. Otherwise, we will not be able to satisfy this five-year payback period. We have seen in some of the languages where some albums did very, very well. The prices went up substantially. It happened in a couple of South Indian languages.
Companies like ours and even one of our competitors have just pulled back, saying right now we will not invest at these kinds of prices that are there in the market. You are aware, sir, that we have been shipping on some of the QIP money for some time. However tempting it may be to go out there and acquire content at any price, as a management team at Saregama, we are very conscious of the fact that even if it comes at the cost of market share, we will not invest in content if we believe that it's overpriced and we will not be able to live up to five-year payback period.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Sir, have you been evaluating our library of songs or films or other things we have made? Any barometer to evaluate this evaluation?
Sorry, sir. I'm not very clear about your question.
Sir, we have so many songs like 150,000 or films which we have made. Any barometer to evaluate this content?
Sir, no. We have never done an evaluation exercise of all the IP that we people own. We have about 175,000 songs. We have some 75+ I remember, movies. We have some 1,700, 1,800 hours or 3,000 hours of TV content IP that we people own, and we have lots of content that we own in Pocket Aces We charge up everything. We have never done an evaluation exercise.
Ravi, just a question. I mean, just to understand, why is this question coming up? Is there any kind of thought process behind this question?
One thing is in our mind, what is the valuation of our company? It is almost INR 10,000 crore. I would like to find whether our content cost is more than INR 10,000 crore or less of that. That is in my mind.
Sir, about that, you will not really be direct, okay?
I think.
I am very novice in this music industry. I am just asking you whether any barometer is there to evaluate. That would be my point.
Any internal exercise has not been carried out, sir.
Okay. Okay. Last, sir, almost INR 700 crore you will spend on content cost in financial year 2026, 2027. Thereafter, what will be our plans?
Sir, we have been stating that we want to get acquired 25%- 30% of all new content that comes out. We believe that with the INR 700 crore, we will reach that level. At this moment, we have no intent to increase our market share of new content beyond 30%. Let's see how well we people spare over the next 18 months, and we will then share with you. Standing today, I think we are comfortable with the kind of market share that we people are getting at this moment. For us, the good part is that not only we are getting content, its ratio to flop ratio is the best in the market today because we are using data to decide what content to pick up and what cost structures to pick up. We will share with you, sir, if over the next 18 months, the future strategy.
Okay. Okay. All the best, sir.
Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rahul Picha from Multi-Act PMS . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Dashman here. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. First one is on minimum guarantee on Spotify and JioSaavn. What we understand is Spotify and JioSaavn has done away with minimum guarantee across the music labels. Just wanted to know when that minimum guarantee was taken away by the Spotify and JioSaavn, and what was the impact of it in our Q1 numbers?
Sir, I can't comment on specific commercial leads that we have with these two platforms. All I can say, maybe your information may not be 100% accurate, but I'll leave it just there, sir.
Okay. Our second question is on YouTube. YouTube has changed monetization policy towards user-generated content. Has that impacted, I think, Q1? The growth has been impacted negatively in Q1 because of that?
No, sir. The specific thing we are talking about is not just a quarter old. It started happening from last year onwards, and that has been fully factored in if you see a revenue rivalry. I wouldn't have been able to show you this kind of a revenue growth unless YouTube was also firing for us. We had very recent newer content getting released in this quarter. We did a pretty decent job of making more money from our older content. For that, it's important both the channel revenue as well as the user-generated content revenue should go up. I think we are proud of what the team has been able to do out here. We have been able to hold on to our revenues out.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Pallavi Deshpande from Sameeksha Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Yeah, I just wanted to understand on this recent movie release, Saiyaara, where Yash Raj Films has kept it to themselves. Is that a new competitor in the market, or are we likely to see more such cases going ahead? That they don't have a music label, I believe.
Yes, ma'am. All I can say is that Yash Raj has been now following this policy for, I think, over 25 years, if memory serves me correctly. I think Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was the last movie or music we had bought that they have given out. To the best of my understanding, they are the only production house in the country, not just in Hindi, that has taken the call to retain the IP and not give it to a music label. I wish I can tell you for guarantee that nobody in the future will do this, but we have not seen any evidence of any other production house doing it. Please understand for any new film producer, they are able to recover anything between 8% - 5% of their total cost of the film by selling the rights of music.
It becomes a good seed funding money right now for them to put up their film project. Most of them bank on the profits they make from their box office performance far more and try to hedge their risk by selling the music rights, digital rights, and the TV rights. That's how the industry functions today. Yash Raj Films is in excess.
All right. My second question would be that in terms of the comps, they become more difficult for us from 3Q, I guess, or 2Q because of 3Q last year bumping up the music licensing revenue. On the music licensing, if you could give some more color of any new or bigger budget or things that we have lined up, I mean, coming up in terms of the music rights we may have acquired in Hindi big budget.
I think Stree 2 was, for the highlight, which to say right now that we were geniuses who knew how big Stree 2 will become before the release. I don't think we expected it. It's all courtesy right now. The production house Maddock and the composer Sachin-Jigar who gave such phenomenal music. It's so difficult to say in advance which music will take off the way they did. We have some very big movies who come from production houses who are known for their music. I think the biggest is Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Love & War, which is supposed to be released in March. It has got Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Vicky Kaushal. It's Bhansali herself directing the movie after some time. We also have Ranveer Singh's Dhurandhar. Their trailer dropped some time back, was using one of the old Saregama songs, and it has got serious appreciation.
We are bullish on that. We also have Dharma Productions' movie Main Tera Tu Meri Tu Mera Main Teri, which is a Kartik Aaryan movie. Dharma is always known for giving very high-quality music. We are banking on that too. We have Anush's movie coming in later this year, which is in Tamil. We have Darshan, who is Kannada's number one star. His movie coming in later this year. We have Nani's movie coming in Telugu . Very decent line-up. Unfortunately, the majority of the stuff is sitting in Q3 and Q4. It's the release of these films that gives us the confidence to hold on to our guidance of 22%- 23% growth in short to medium term on the music side.
Right. Right, sir. My last question would be on this recent T-Series signed up with this artist of Saiyaara, the Kashmiri guy. Were we also in talks with this artist?
Let's not talk about these official artist deals. It's unfair to my team, unfair to T-Series, and unfair to the extremely talented artists we are talking about. Artist Management is something we take very, very seriously. Philosophically, Saregama bets more on new-age artists who are young, in whom we see potential. We groom them, do music videos with them, and with some of them, we are even putting them in our films or putting them in our digital series. That's the power of also having the video vertical within the company and trying to make them big. Two or three of them have already started releasing their content out. Hopefully, very soon, you're going to be talking about them and asking me how did you manage to do the project.
Right. Right, sir. My last question, if I may, on this payback for the Haryanvi catalog that you've purchased, would that fit in that five-year period? If you could share the cost of that acquisition.
Ma'am, I'll not be able to share specific commercials.
Sure.
Because all constraints right now, various workers we have. When we people are overall, what I can tell you right now, I think we have got a very, very good deal. The beauty of this deal is that the promoters are not only selling their catalog to us but are also working with us to create fresh Haryanvi content for Saregama. I think as valuable as their catalog is, equally valuable is Rashi, Rajesh Gupta, who used to own NAV and have his son and nephew. I think they are one of the smartest people on the Haryanvi side. The fact they are ready to partner with us to create more Haryanvi content is what inspires far more confidence in us and makes me happy.
Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you again for the opportunity. Vikram, my follow-on question was, you know, we're supposed to send in brand sponsored podcasts. Do we have any play out there? What is your view going forward? How can Pocket Aces help us out there?
Sir, we believe within the company, it's a very good question you have asked. Within the company, we realize that we make a decent amount of money from platforms wherein we put our content on, from a Netflix to a Spotify to a YouTube, and we get a share of advertising. We also have a play direct to customer where customer pays for Carvaan or customer pays for a Live Event, a Himesh Reshammiya concert or a Diljit Dosanjh's concert. We realize that we need to now strengthen our play in brands coming on board and putting their monies right now behind our content. Within the company, we have constituted a completely new vertical, which is now going to be selling to brands, both from a music perspective, to create bespoke content for various brands. It may be a brand- new song.
It may be somebody who wants to do a digital concert or a digital music-based show. That team is also going to be selling to brands sponsorship for live events and getting brands right now for our entire FilterCopy range of channels. We are combining this and now going out there to the brand and saying that if you want to reach out to the younger people who are more and more getting away from the world of television, we may be a great solution whereby we can give you both music, video, as well as influencers, a package which can be offered across to you. Podcasts, both video and audio, are part of the same thing.
Understood.
This quarter, we've seen a drop in advertising expense, whereas the content cost has remained the same. What has driven this fall in advertising?
Sir, whenever a new movie is released, the marketing cost is charged off immediately. When the content cost is charged off right now in a phased manner, what you can call it is that in a year, in a quarter, its content cost will also have the previous year's uncharged content cost being charged off every quarter. The marketing depends only and only if a brand new thing has been released in that quarter or not.
Great. Great. Lastly.
Because I'm not saying marketing cost is going to come down, because
I can connect with your comments on, you know, new releases were not there this quarter. Maybe that is what has driven the expense. Yes.
Vikram, just the last one was, you know, if you see ad rates in the industry going down and advertising revenue going down, does this then delay the payback period that you have to monetize your content? Does it impact that philosophy?
Sure. I think right now, yes, it should impact. All I can tell you is we have not seen a week or view coming down on platforms which are advertising dependent.
Okay. Understood. Understood. Okay. That's just from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you. There are no further concerns from the participants in the conference. Over to the management for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Sir, I've already shared our guidance right now for the future. We believe music industry specifics and even the video side, I think we are still an under-monetized entertainment industry. At Saregama, we believe that the facts that we have seen are data-driven. We run away from anything which is an individual-driven part here. The fact we have a diversified portfolio, which not only hedges our risks but allows us a situation where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The fact that we have a Senior Management team that has been there with the system for a long enough time gives us a very, very good opportunity to monetize and capitalize on this digital revolution that is feeding the country.
In two to three years, the kind of guidance that we people are giving right now, I believe all of the devs are going to get there. Thank you, and please keep supporting us.
Thank you. On behalf of Emkay Global Financial Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you will now disconnect your line. Thank you.