Micromax invests in Gaana to fight off Xiaomi

Micromax users get a free trial of Gaana's premium service and immediate access to the app, reports Tech in Asia

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

“India is a music loving country and today’s youth is hooked on music for at least 2 to 3 hours a day through their smartphones,” explained Gaana co-founder Rahul Sharma in a press release. Gaana’s numbers show that this is true – it claims to have over 20 million active users with 30 million total downloads. There are no figures for how many people are paying for premium 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.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.