Micromax Invest on Gaana to Unified App with Handsets

Micromax, the home grown largest smartphone manufacturing company has invested in Gaana, the music streaming app of Times Internet. Under the new deal, Gaana the country’s largest music broadcast and streaming service provider will be available on all Micromax smartphones and will allow the users to access the mobile app. Yet, the financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

New users of the Micromax smartphones will also receive free trials to Gaana+ by allowing unlimited downloads without advertising. After the trial users can continue with Gaana + or use Gaana to access more than 10 million songs with ad-supported streaming. Reportedly, Gaana has more than 20 million active users and has seen over 30 million downloads.

Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet told, "Gaana is becoming a household brand for music, and in partnership with Micromax we will strengthen our footprint, helping us reach our goal of 100 million Indian users listening to millions of songs via Gaana. Micromax is the most popular smartphone company in India, passionate about providing its consumers with the best experiences. It's a great opportunity to bring our service to their users."

Micromax is the largest smartphone manufacturing company in the India and is selling about more than 3.5 million mobile phones every month.

Earlier in May, the company said that it would invest $500,000 to $20 million in more than 20 startups over 12 months. Recently, Micromax made its first international investment on New York based company MiMedia.

The company also invested on Delhi based, online travel search engine ixigo.com and Banglore based fitness app HealthifyMe.

Rahul Sharma, co-founder, Micromax Informatics, said, "We at Micromax have been consistently integrating the best in class services to our smartphones and are trying to build an ecosystem of connected devices in a connected world. India is a music loving country and youth today are hooked on music for at least two to three hours a day through their smartphones. Gaana brings the widest selection of songs across genres and we are proud to announce our strategic partnership with them to provide our neo users an uninterrupted access to latest tunes and transcend them into the world of music."