Shrirang Deodhar joins Zee Music Company as associate director, music marketing

MUMBAI: Mumbai’s music-marketing circuit has a fresh talking point. Shrirang Deodhar, who spent the last three years and seven months building Saregama’s regional catalogue, has jumped ship to Zee Music Company as associate director, music marketing. The move, effective this month, hands him charge of marketing across India’s regional repertoire, a job as sprawling as the country’s linguistic map itself.

Fifteen years in the business have taken Deodhar from client servicing at Ogilvy & Mather to trade marketing at 92.7 BIG FM, then content marketing at Discovery Inc, before he found his stride in music. At Shemaroo Entertainment he ran brand strategy across B2B and B2C lines; at Saregama he built and sustained campaigns for Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Odia and devotional music, working artist relationships and platform partnerships in equal measure.

That last stint is what makes the Zee move interesting. Regional music in India is not a niche, it is the main event, streaming numbers keep proving as much, and record labels are locked in a scrap for artists, catalogue and cultural relevance. Deodhar’s pitch, that India does not have one soundtrack but many, is less a slogan than a job description. At Zee Music, backed by a bigger content ecosystem and deeper pockets, he gets a wider canvas to run the same playbook: 360-degree launches, digital-platform tie-ups, data-led market reads and campaigns built to feel like culture rather than advertising.

Neha Malhotra gets a name-check in the announcement, a nod to whoever made the hire happen. For Zee Music, the appointment signals intent to sharpen its regional push at a time when every major label is racing to own vernacular audiences. For Deodhar, it is the natural next rung after a career spent translating market insight into songs that stay on repeat.