Prashan Agarwal, the CEO of India-based streaming platform Gaana, is leaving the company, sources tell MBW.
An internal note confirming that Agarwal is stepping down from Gaana is understood to have been issued to staff this week.
MBW has contacted Gaana for confirmation of the news.
Gaana announced in August 2020 that it had surpassed 185 million monthly active users.
Gaana is majority-owned by Times Internet, but just over a third of the streaming music firm (around 34.4%) is owned by Tencent Holdings.
The size of Tencent’s stake in Gaana rose as a result of the latter company raising 3.75bn INR (approximately $51m) in debt last year to help finance its growth.
Agarwal joined Gaana as CEO in May 2016. He previously co-founded businesses including 19miles.com and PropTiger.com.
Today’s news comes two years after Gaana rival Spotify launched in India.
Spotify’s MD in India, Amarjit Batra, told India’s The Telegraph this week: “We were told that we were late to the market, which already had many players. We saw that not everyone understood streaming very well.
“Some of them are well-tuned to streaming and some are new to the technology. Like India, there are some markets that are new to streaming. I believe that some of [our] learnings from India can be implemented in other markets.”
Tencent initially acquired a stake in Gaana via a $115m investment in the company in February 2018.Music Business Worldwide