, the first Indian artist to be recorded (1902) In 1901, the company began operations as the first overseas branch of the
Gramophone Company (later
EMI from 1931), by recording the first song in India. It was incorporated in
Calcutta (now Kolkata) as
The Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. The following year,
Fred Gaisberg, assistant to
gramophone record inventor
Emile Berliner, arrived in India “on a mission to capture [its] music”. On 5 January 1902,
Gauhar Jaan became the first Indian artist to be recorded. In 1907, a record manufacturing facility was established in
Dum Dum, Calcutta — the first of its kind outside the United Kingdom. On 13 August 1946, the company was incorporated as a private limited entity under the name
The Gramophone Co. (India) Limited. It was converted into a public limited company on 28 October 1968, following which its name was changed to
The Gramophone Company of India Limited. From 1909 to 2003, the company retailed its music products—
records,
cassettes, and
compact discs—under the
His Master's Voice (HMV) brand, using the iconic logo of a dog named
Nipper listening to a gramophone. Even after
EMI sold the company to the
RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group in 1985, Saregama continued to use the HMV name and symbol under a licensing agreement. This arrangement ended in 2003, when EMI divested the rights to the HMV trademark to the British retailer of the same name. Saregama owns a music repertoire that spans film and non-film music, including
Carnatic,
Hindustani classical, devotional, folk, and other genres, in over 23
Indian languages. The first song recorded in India—by Gauhar Jaan in 1902—and the soundtrack of the first Indian talkie film,
Alam Ara (1931), were released under the label. The company holds the rights to a growing number of films and over 6,000 hours of television content. It continues to expand its catalogue through new acquisitions across Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, and other regional languages. Its catalogue includes devotional music across multiple faiths—such as
Hindu,
Sikh,
Islamic, and
Christian—as well as a diverse collection of regional
folk music. ==Saregama Carvaan==