Bollywood’s Power Duo Farhan & Ritesh Strike $90M UMG Soundtrack Deal

Max Sterling, 1/6/2026 UMG just hit play on a $290M Bollywood remix, buying into Excel Entertainment and aiming to blast Indian soundtracks worldwide. Is this a creative encore or a corporate overture? Either way, Mumbai’s music scene just got loud enough for Los Angeles to hear. Stay tuned for the global drop.

Reading between the lines here, this isn’t your typical handshake-in-a-conference-room partnership—the sort that generates a wave or two in Variety and is promptly forgotten before the coffee cools. No, the numbers alone—an estimated $300 million valuation, give or take the rupee’s daily mood swings, with Universal’s buy-in weighing somewhere between $90 and $267 million—announce a new chapter. More importantly, this signals a power shift, one where India’s creative surge is no longer just making noise abroad; it’s actively renegotiating the global entertainment table. Suddenly, Mumbai feels just as central to the pop culture conversation as Los Angeles or London.

For the uninitiated, Excel’s backstory could almost pass for a film pitch. Let’s rewind to the late ‘90s, where two enterprising filmmakers, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, disrupt Bollywood’s well-worn tracks with Dil Chahta Hai—a film every Indian millennial knows by heart. Here were characters navigating love, friendship, and existential anxiety, all while crooning to songs that actually felt, well, modern. No longer were the soundtracks mere set dressing. They were integral, infectious—a kind of aural passport that introduced a fresh India to the world.

Since then, Excel hasn’t stopped zigzagging across genres. Don, that slick reimagining of a ‘70s classic; Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, part road movie, part bromantic therapy session; Gully Boy, India’s answer to 8 Mile, except set against a backdrop of Mumbai’s thumping hip-hop undercurrent. Add Mirzapur and Inside Edge—two streaming powerhouses—and you start to get the sense that Excel prefers tossing away rulebooks to rewriting them.

So—why the Universal buy-in now? Sure, India’s music market is the 15th largest (and climbing), but it’s the soundtracks that set the tempo here. Bollywood tunes aren’t just background noise—they’re life events, blaring from phone speakers in Delhi traffic or echoing up Himalayan hillsides. If executives speak of “original soundtracks at the heart of India’s growth,” it’s corporate-speak with more than a grain of truth. The right song from the right film? It can ping-pong from Andheri to Amsterdam overnight.

Let’s wade into the fine print for a moment—no need for a spreadsheet, just a quick look under the hood. Universal’s local arm, UMI, takes that prominent 30% stake. With Excel still clocking in at a ₹2,400 crore valuation, the deal unlocks global distribution for every future soundtrack and, just as crucially, births a joint music label. Call it a two-way street: Indian artists get a foot in the world’s concert halls (or TikTok feeds, more likely), and Universal gains first dibs on the next cultural crossover. Plus, there’s a seat for UMG's regional chief, Devraj Sanyal, at Excel’s board table. Still, it won’t turn into a corporate puppet show; the creative reins stay tightly clutched by the original founders.

The optimists among industry watchers are predictably buoyant, bandying about terms like “meaningful synergy” and “global lens.” For once, though, there’s substance beneath the trade talk. India’s content creators aren’t just dreaming bigger—they now have distribution muscle to match, a necessary upgrade for a market already ballooning past 375 million OTT streamers and an army of smartphone scrollers. When a Gully Boy’s soundtrack lands, it isn’t just a playlist pick—it’s a pop culture thunderclap.

And Universal’s real motive? Besides a bit of positive press and, perhaps, dance tutorials, they're tapping into the overwhelmingly dominant "screen music" habit in India. It’s early access to what could well be the next global obsession—no small feat given the steady west-to-east flow of pop culture that’s persisted for decades.

Still, anyone who’s watched the entertainment world for longer than the latest streaming cycle knows that creative freedom and corporate oversight rarely get along for long. Will Excel’s “clutter-breaking, original content” hold strong, or mutate beneath the familiar gravity of big-money expectations? There’s always the risk that instead of curry bursting with flavor, we end up with a bland, pan-global stew. Stranger things have happened—Netflix’s recent local content stumbles spring to mind.

Time, and maybe the next few Excel soundtracks, will settle the question. For now, all eyes—and, perhaps more crucially, ears—are fixed on what comes next. Could this be the start of a new era, where Indian storytelling and music not only cross borders, but start influencing taste instead of following it? Or will this partnership fade into the background noise of business history?

One thing seems probable, at least: While LA’s music moguls will always have a seat at the table, the next global earworm might just originate in a Mumbai studio, with a chorus that’s part Hindi, part hip-hop, and all attitude. Somewhere out there, an Excel writer is already scribbling notes for the inevitable satire: “The Merger: The Soundtrack That Changed Everything (Or Did It?).”

It wouldn’t be the first time real life trumped fiction.

There are business deals, and then there are seismic events—a kind of thunderclap that rattles not just the executive suite, but echoes across studio sets and, in this case, the bustling streets of Mumbai. Picture this: Universal Music Group, the decades-old orchestrator behind a sizable chunk of the world’s playlists, just signed on for a near-third chunk of Excel Entertainment. Now, Excel isn’t some second-tier outfit lurching about in indie obscurity. It’s the studio that, since the early 2000s, has spun Bollywood from melodramatic comfort food into a far spicier global fare, soundtracks included.Reading between the lines here, this isn’t your typical handshake-in-a-conference-room partnership—the sort that generates a wave or two in Variety and is promptly forgotten before the coffee cools. No, the numbers alone—an estimated $300 million valuation, give or take the rupee’s daily mood swings, with Universal’s buy-in weighing somewhere between $90 and $267 million—announce a new chapter. More importantly, this signals a power shift, one where India’s creative surge is no longer just making noise abroad; it’s actively renegotiating the global entertainment table. Suddenly, Mumbai feels just as central to the pop culture conversation as Los Angeles or London.For the uninitiated, Excel’s backstory could almost pass for a film pitch. Let’s rewind to the late ‘90s, where two enterprising filmmakers, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, disrupt Bollywood’s well-worn tracks with Dil Chahta Hai—a film every Indian millennial knows by heart. Here were characters navigating love, friendship, and existential anxiety, all while crooning to songs that actually felt, well, modern. No longer were the soundtracks mere set dressing. They were integral, infectious—a kind of aural passport that introduced a fresh India to the world.Since then, Excel hasn’t stopped zigzagging across genres. Don, that slick reimagining of a ‘70s classic; Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, part road movie, part bromantic therapy session; Gully Boy, India’s answer to 8 Mile, except set against a backdrop of Mumbai’s thumping hip-hop undercurrent. Add Mirzapur and Inside Edge—two streaming powerhouses—and you start to get the sense that Excel prefers tossing away rulebooks to rewriting them.So—why the Universal buy-in now? Sure, India’s music market is the 15th largest (and climbing), but it’s the soundtracks that set the tempo here. Bollywood tunes aren’t just background noise—they’re life events, blaring from phone speakers in Delhi traffic or echoing up Himalayan hillsides. If executives speak of “original soundtracks at the heart of India’s growth,” it’s corporate-speak with more than a grain of truth. The right song from the right film? It can ping-pong from Andheri to Amsterdam overnight.Let’s wade into the fine print for a moment—no need for a spreadsheet, just a quick look under the hood. Universal’s local arm, UMI, takes that prominent 30% stake. With Excel still clocking in at a ₹2,400 crore valuation, the deal unlocks global distribution for every future soundtrack and, just as crucially, births a joint music label. Call it a two-way street: Indian artists get a foot in the world’s concert halls (or TikTok feeds, more likely), and Universal gains first dibs on the next cultural crossover. Plus, there’s a seat for UMG's regional chief, Devraj Sanyal, at Excel’s board table. Still, it won’t turn into a corporate puppet show; the creative reins stay tightly clutched by the original founders.The optimists among industry watchers are predictably buoyant, bandying about terms like “meaningful synergy” and “global lens.” For once, though, there’s substance beneath the trade talk. India’s content creators aren’t just dreaming bigger—they now have distribution muscle to match, a necessary upgrade for a market already ballooning past 375 million OTT streamers and an army of smartphone scrollers. When a Gully Boy’s soundtrack lands, it isn’t just a playlist pick—it’s a pop culture thunderclap.And Universal’s real motive? Besides a bit of positive press and, perhaps, dance tutorials, they're tapping into the overwhelmingly dominant "screen music" habit in India. It’s early access to what could well be the next global obsession—no small feat given the steady west-to-east flow of pop culture that’s persisted for decades.Still, anyone who’s watched the entertainment world for longer than the latest streaming cycle knows that creative freedom and corporate oversight rarely get along for long. Will Excel’s “clutter-breaking, original content” hold strong, or mutate beneath the familiar gravity of big-money expectations? There’s always the risk that instead of curry bursting with flavor, we end up with a bland, pan-global stew. Stranger things have happened—Netflix’s recent local content stumbles spring to mind.Time, and maybe the next few Excel soundtracks, will settle the question. For now, all eyes—and, perhaps more crucially, ears—are fixed on what comes next. Could this be the start of a new era, where Indian storytelling and music not only cross borders, but start influencing taste instead of following it? Or will this partnership fade into the background noise of business history?One thing seems probable, at least: While LA’s music moguls will always have a seat at the table, the next global earworm might just originate in a Mumbai studio, with a chorus that’s part Hindi, part hip-hop, and all attitude. Somewhere out there, an Excel writer is already scribbling notes for the inevitable satire: “The Merger: The Soundtrack That Changed Everything (Or Did It?).”It wouldn’t be the first time real life trumped fiction.