MUMBAI: Divo, India’s leading digital media and music companies based out of South India.

Shahir Muneer started the company with, Vishu Ramaswamy in 2014 and in less than a decade has established Divo as one of India’s largest multi-platform online video networks (aka as Multi-Channel Networks / MCNs) working as enterprise content partners with 50+ digital platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Amazon Prime Video, amongst other platforms, worldwide.  

Shahir Muneer, Founder, and Director at Divo Music tells Radioandmusic.com of its growth in millennial musicians from South India, visions and future plans.

What are the visions of Divo Music for 2021?

We have a robust music distribution and publishing business model that competes with the distributors in India. It was something that we cracked as a model way back in 2014 when there wasn’t any option of distributors. Our business model has always been based on a strong one-on-one relationship with our labels and artists, doing the work with ease and being available to them. Having accomplished people and process, our next foray is into Technology. 2021 for us will be about our tech offerings, that will be a focus point for our clientele.

The millennial musicians from the south of India have started to have an impact on the rest of the country purely due to the love for music despite a language barrier?

Honestly, I do not think it is just millennials, but in general there has always been a camaraderie to appreciate good music by the audience, be it regional audience let us say like a Telugu song being appreciated by Tamil audience or a Kannada song being listened to by Tamil audience and so forth. Ilayaraja, AR Rahman, Yuvan, Anirudh have done that one generation after another, respectively.

As the discovery of new music has become completely digital and nothing stops a song from going viral and becoming popular in a region that does not necessarily understand the language, it is only going to increase, inspire musicians to break barriers and raise the ceiling for what a song can achieve.

How do we introduce musicians to audiences and create awareness among those who may be unfamiliar but are ardent music listeners?

There is no such formula or recipe unfortunately. The only way is to work hard and keep striving to put out your music on YouTube, social media, streaming platforms and look to build your audience organically.

I have said this time and again, that even a big artist like Justin Bieber started out by singing in his living room and uploading it on YouTube. It was not a traditional MTV style music video, but eventually his talent got discovered and he became popular. Do not shy away from putting out your content and performing on social media apps, short video apps, karaoke apps to increase your audience and potentially earn from it too. If you have the talent, even if it may take some time, you will get an opportunity and become successful eventually.

Over the last 7 years of founding Divo Music, are you proud of it? Is this what you visioned when you started?

Yes of course, as an entrepreneur there is nothing like achieving growth on a business model that did not exist and was created by us. We have truly been market disruptors in this space. Yes, while we had envisioned to be a regional player in the digital content and media business, music was a natural extension; but to achieve the scale organically being a bootstrapped company was not something we were sure that would be able to achieve. And this is something we are proud of. I also believe that we had a bit of luck or fate that we were able to begin our journey in the industry at the right time, which truly happened out of the circumstances that we came across with our clients and the industry and it was not by design.