CHENNAI: W hen everything is custom-made — right from the ice cream to the wedding blazer, why shouldn’t songs be tailored to your needs and moods? Music4Thought, a startup based in Hyderabad, is trying to do just that.
Founded by young professionals turned first generation entrepreneurs Preeti Sinha, Rohit Shrivastav and Parikshit Sharma, the bootstrapped startup has currently created about 37 original content and hopes to expand the number as the experiences touch more number of people.
Says Preeti Sinha, co-founder and CEO of the brand, “It is the perfect platform to try out new ideas. For individuals wanting to convey their unspoken feelings, gratitude or love for someone, or for lyricists, singers, and hobbyists to record their original songs and for short filmmakers and animation film producers wanting to produce original scores and sound effects and looking to collaborate with the best in the industry.”
Citing a case, Preeti says, “We had a customer who wanted to perform on a song to express her excitement, joy and emotions of getting married to her love, a song that tells her story and about the most important decision she had made in her life. Post production it became the signature wedding tune. Another is a story of a son who wished to convert his mother’s song writings into a song album and gift it to her on her birthday.”
Music producer Parikshit Sharma is also part of core management team and carries two decades of experience in the industry having worked with Shankar Mahadevan and produced the album Breathless. He worked with Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy, Anu Malik, Shantanu Moitra, etc. Besides Sanjay Leela Bhansali projects he is also associated with films like Guzaarish, Ram Leela, Bajirao Mastani.
“India could be the destination for music outsourcing and we have infrastructure and capabilities to provide quality music to cater to global music needs,” Parikshit Sharma, co-founder and director, Music4thought said.
At present, Music4thought has a direct revenue model, where individuals and business pay for service and content, as in, music, song and videos. The start-up plans to publish the content and enhance the revenue stream with co-branding opportunities and advertising. Moving forward, the company plans to use other revenue models that are right now on paper and will be implemented as and when the time comes.
Preeti and Rohit are based out of Hyderabad along with few team members but their team is spread across the nation. “We started with a core team of four members — Preeti and Rohit (founder) are husband and wife, other two Zoheb and Pallav were composer and lyricist who believed in the concept and came onboard along with singers,” the team recalls.
Once customers started showing interests in personalised songs offered by them, Preeti and Rohit’s focus shifted to – how to scale the business? What else could they do? That’s when they wanted a musical expert who has experience and most importantly energy to join their team.
So how did they manage the funding? Preeti, Rohit and Parikshit are investing in the company from their own savings. The team is hoping that the upcoming wedding season will fetch them some good deals. “There are many inquiries and people are showing interest in using personalised songs for weddings — it’s like having your very own signature wedding tune,” says Preeti.
Some brides are even singing their own personalised wedding songs and recording them in studios with our experts. So many wedding planners, cinematographers and videographers have agreed to partner and are using original music or personalised songs for wedding videos too.