Saavn Hires Ex-Google Exec as COO, Reveals User Numbers & Milestones
Mumbai, IN – January 22, 2015 – Saavn, India’s music streaming service, is kicking off 2015 with explosive growth and adding new leadership from one of India’s top digital executives. Hailing from companies like Google, AdMob (acquired by Google) and Sociomantic Labs (acquired by Dunnhumby), Mahesh Narayanan brings a decade of digital experience to Saavn. The company has already grown to more than 11 million monthly streaming users, with more than 30 million unique users in 2014 alone. Saavn is also now the most downloaded music service worldwide for Indian music with the Google Play Store showing 10 to 50 million downloads for the Saavn Android app.
Based out of Mumbai, Narayanan will oversee numerous functions of the company to encourage growth and support Saavn’s expansion in 2015. He most recently led the India operations for German display advertising company, Sociomantic, which was acquired by Dunnhumby in April 2014, less than a year after he helped launch the company’s Mumbai-based operations.
Prior to Sociomantic, Narayanan played a major role in planting the seeds of growth for Google India. He was the founding member of Google’s Direct Sales Operations in 2005, before joining the leadership team of mobile advertising network, AdMob. Following Google’s acquisition of AdMob in 2010, Narayanan returned to Google as Mobile Head for India. His bold leadership and invaluable contributions to Google’s growth in India landed Narayanan a slot on India’s Impact Magazine “Digital Power 100” in December 2012. He will now devote his talent to the digital music industry.
“Mahesh is an elite executive who is recognized as one of the top digital leaders in the world and brings a bright, uniquely experienced perspective to Saavn. He’ll be involved in 360 degrees of the company to help make everyone better and bring us into the next chapter of growth and revenue. We’re honored to have Mahesh on board, and he has already made a tremendous impact on the organization in his first few weeks with us. Businesses are built off great people. Mahesh is one of the best,” Rishi Malhotra, Co-Founder and CEO of Saavn, said.
“I am most passionate about digital technology and music. Saavn represents my vision of the ideal blend of both passions most aptly. I’ve had the opportunity to help many leading global technology media companies achieve success, and I genuinely believe that Saavn is primed for the same caliber of success. I am really excited about partnering with Rishi and the leadership team to take Saavn to a whole new league,” Narayanan said.
Narayanan joins Saavn as the company enters its most significant phase of growth. In addition to crossing user thresholds (30 million unique users in 2014; 11 million monthly streaming users), Saavn is announcing several major milestones, including:
· Entering the 10-50 Million Downloads tier on Android, making it the most downloaded Indian music service in Google Play (international).
· 6x increase in Saavn Pro subscribers from Q1 2014.
· 3x increase in streaming volume from Q1 2014.
· Approaching 200 million streams per month.
· 90% of users are on mobile.
Saavn closed 2014 with partnerships with companies like Twitter, T-Mobile and Snapdeal, an industry-first content initiative with Sony, and a bold year-end infographic celebrating Saavn’s most active cities and users.
