Driving Digital Transformation for Competitive Distinctiveness: The Case of Saregama Carvaan 2.0

The wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a substantial transformation in the wants and desires of customers, which in turn has cast immense pressure on corporate professionals and business managers to modify their business strategies and reorient their business models if needs must. Digital transformation, in this light, happens to be crucial for all forms of business enterprises, and the need to foster novel business models that synchronize ‘digital’ with ‘physical’ has proliferated following the COVID-19 pandemic. Contemporary business professionals also have leveraged technology to ameliorate the efficiency levels of the organization, while exploring new market opportunities, enhancing supply chains and responding to altered customer expectations. The pandemic has coerced prospective customers to increasingly tap the benefits of the Internet and social networking platforms to fulfil their needs for a plethora of activities, be it shopping, entertainment, socializing or even learning. It is hence imperative for businesses to briskly and respond to this shift in a cost-effective manner, by cashing in on the prospect of growth through innovation and competitive distinction. For instance, the music business was one of the earliest to be impacted by the new wave of digital transformation. The comfortable and ubiquitous access to the Internet, coupled with the proliferation of digital music, has tripped the disruption of the music business over the last decade. Saregama Carvaan acts as a brilliant case-in-point, highlighting how they reshaped their traditional business model to remain close to their customers. Through a successful brand rejuvenation strategy, the company testified that digital transformation could beget significant novel opportunities in the music industry, in a market dominated by digital music platforms such as YouTube, Gaana, and Saavn. Since its launch in 2018, Saregama Carvaan has transcended from being perceived as a mere retro-music index with 5000 preloaded songs, to a hard-hitting content creator in the realms of music, movies and television. The company, since 2019, has begun to make strategic investments in new Hindi film music, while planning a venture into the Bhojpuri music industry. The company also owns a film production unit named Yoodlee Films, which has been known for its major original releases on digital platforms such as Netflix and Hotstar. The company has recently, before the wake of the pandemic, soared in terms of its technological and content invention, with Carvaan 2.0; it offers its target consumers ubiquitous ingress to over 200 podcast stations. Saregama further modified its business model wherein they proffered a unique podium to content creators who can dispense their audio content across the world. The current research case study is thus an attempt to examine the process by which Saregama Carvaan 2.0 has reconsidered their customer value propositions and operational processes. The study also investigates whether the entire set of product offerings and operations of Saregama shall ever be entirely digitized, especially since the need for physical infrastructure shall always be a requirement. The case study further inspects a series of subsequent questions such as: how are the physical and digital developments of Saregama required to be administered in unison without estranging potential customers and conceiving superfluous degrees of intricacy? How does Saregama integrate novel and archetypal business operations, and how does this influence customers? How does the company reshape its customer value propositions? Finally, how does Saregama remodel its business processes to present new customer value propositions efficaciously, resourcefully and innovatively? Responses to these questions shall help unfurl how Saregama has been implementing a proactive stance in the digital transformation and is leveraging the total capacity of its disruptive technologies.