Vikram Mehra of Saregama: The music maker
Chhoti Si Kahaani Se (from the 1987 film Ijaazat), greet you right at the entrance. It’s obvious that managing director Vikram Mehra, 53, is a huge fan of films and songs from the 1970s and 1980s, which he refers to as his formative years.
In fact, the first time he met Bhosle in person, Mehra says he had one request. “I touched her feet and said, aap mere liye bas ek cheez kar dijiye (please do just one thing for me).
Please sing Do Lafzon Ki," Mehra recalls, referring to the superhit romantic number from The Great Gambler starring Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman that Mehra had watched in Jaipur’s iconic single-screen cinema Raj Mandir in 1979. Growing up, Mehra spent time away from classes and studies at Raj Mandir and other now-defunct cinemas in Jaipur, watching Bachchan films like Trishul, Namak Halaal and Sharaabi, and singing along to the chartbusters.
In October 2014, when the offer to join Saregama came, Mehra, who was then chief commercial officer at DTH (direct-to-home) company Tata Play (then Tata Sky Ltd) and had a background in advertising and marketing at companies like Star India and Tata Motors, didn’t think twice. Also read: Prashanth Prakash: Master mentor He dived right into things, first initiating a return to film music acquisition—backed by the company board—that Saregama had paused for a couple of years as it struggled with declining physical sales and rising piracy levels.
In 2017, he introduced the game-changer Carvaan, a portable digital audio player with 5,000 pre-loaded yesteryear songs that the music label by virtue of its decades-old history, owned the rights to. The personal jukebox spoke specifically to the 40-plus generation that was then hugely wary of paying for new technology to
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