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Phone maker Micromax yesterday announced its investment in Gaana, a music streaming service.
Gaana is India’s largest music streaming service and has a library of over 10 million songs in 45 languages, including Hindi, English, and Tamil. It also provides access to 45 radio stations.
Micromax users now receive free trials of Gaana’s premium service, Gaana+. The trial includes unlimited downloads and an ad-free subscription to the service. This also means that the Gaana service will come pre-installed on each Micromax phone.
The homegrown company is India’s second biggest phone maker with 22% of the country’s market share, just behind Samsung. It’s up against a handful of other Indian brands, as well as an onslaught of Chinese phone makers like Lenovo, Xiaomi, and OnePlus.
Micromax has invested in five other start-ups this year in a bid to build up the web-based services that it can offer to people who buy its phones, including cloud-based backup service MiMedia. In a competitive market where prices are dropping, it’s a way for Micromax to differentiate its phones from other Android devices.
Huge market for music streaming
In 2013, Gaana acquired the rights to more than 79 music labels. This meant it had access to over 50,000 songs. Most international streaming services like Spotify are not available in India.
