Saavn, India’s answer to Spotify, is growing at a blistering pace. The music streaming service recently revealed that it now has 11 million active monthly users, the majority of them from the Indian subcontinent. Saavn is also now the most downloaded music service worldwide for Indian music with the Google Play Store showing 10 to 50 million downloads for the Saavn Android app.
To keep up with its growth, the New York/India startup recently hired former Google India executive and startup figure Mahesh Narayana as its COO. Hailing from companies like Google, AdMob (acquired by Google) and Sociomantic Labs (acquired by Dunnhumby), Mahesh Narayanan brings a decade of digital experience to Saavn. Based out of Mumbai, Narayanan will oversee numerous functions of the company to encourage growth and support Saavn’s expansion in 2015. He most recently led the India operations for German display advertising company, Sociomantic, which was acquired by Dunnhumby in April 2014, less than a year after he helped launch the company’s Mumbai-based operations.
Prior to Sociomantic, Narayanan played a major role in planting the seeds of growth for Google India. He was the founding member of Google’s Direct Sales Operations in 2005, before joining the leadership team of mobile advertising network, AdMob. Following Google’s acquisition of AdMob in 2010, Narayanan returned to Google as Mobile Head for India. His bold leadership and invaluable contributions to Google’s growth in India landed Narayanan a slot on India’s Impact Magazine “Digital Power 100” in December 2012. He will now devote his talent to the digital music industry.
