Billionaire Mukesh Ambani leads a vast portfolio of businesses with numerous partnerships, one of the most notable being with Rishi Malhotra, the visionary behind the development of the JioSaavn app.
Often referred to as “India’s home-grown Spotify,” JioSaavn offers a vast library of music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Rishi Malhotra, who serves as the CEO and co-founder, helped elevate the platform with his strategic insight and leadership.
Malhotra, originally from Nashville, Tennessee, maintained a strong connection to Indian music, growing up listening to legends like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Lata Mangeshkar, alongside international icons such as Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis.
Identifying an opportunity in the digital music market, Malhotra, along with Vinodh Bhat and Paramdeep Singh, launched Saavn as a B2B operation, digitizing Indian music to supply to platforms like iTunes and Amazon, bringing in significant revenue early on.
Seeing further potential, Malhotra once remarked to Mint: “We thought, why not create a service where you can find anything—song title, movie name, composer, or actor—even with a typo, we should still be able to serve you.”
Saavn’s app prototype debuted in 2010, aligned with the growing smartphone market in India. Just two years after Spotify’s creation, Saavn was launched to cater specifically to Indian music, spanning various genres and languages.
Saavn’s rapid growth attracted Mukesh Ambani, who saw potential in integrating it with the Jio network. Through a significant investment, Jio merged with Saavn in 2018, rebranding it as JioSaavn.
This merger, valued at over USD 1 billion (approximately Rs 8300 crore), expanded the app’s reach on both Android and iOS, offering a mix of free and premium services.
