It’s official: South Korean entertainment giant HYBE is planning to expand into India in the second half of 2025.<\/p>\n
Speaking to MBW, a HYBE spokesperson said: “We’re actively engaged in market research and the logistical setup for a new subsidiary in India, targeting a launch between September and October 2025.”<\/p>\n
The move is part of Chairman Bang Si-hyuk<\/b>‘s “vision to export K-Pop methodologies,” they added.<\/p>\n
The expansion also represents the next stage of what HYBE<\/b> calls its \u201cmulti-home, multi-genre strategy,\u201d which, according to HYBE, involves the company “aiming to achieve a dominant market position by seamlessly integrating local culture and characteristics”.<\/p>\n
HYBE’s spokesperson said: “Our strategic expansion into India is driven by Chairman Bang Si-hyuk’s vision to export K-Pop methodologies, aligning with his conviction that the K-Pop business model must be adapted to other genres for sustained growth.”<\/p>\n
Confirmation of the launch in India arrives a month after Yonhap<\/i> reported that HYBE was planning to establish an office in Mumbai, India.<\/a> The news outlet cited sources in the investment community as saying that HYBE is preparing<\/a> to make a \u201cfull-fledged entry into the Indian entertainment market starting with a local office.\u201d<\/p>\n “Our strategic expansion into India is driven by Chairman Bang Si-hyuk’s vision to export K-Pop methodologies, aligning with his conviction that the K-Pop business model must be adapted to other genres for sustained growth.”<\/p>\n HYBE<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Also in April, HYBE launched<\/a> a subsidiary in China, the world\u2019s fifth-largest recorded music market<\/a>, to help K-pop artists expand into the market. HYBE is behind superstar acts including\u00a0BTS<\/b>,\u00a0ENHYPEN<\/b>, Seventeen<\/b>, and others.<\/p>\n If completed, the launch of an office in India will mark HYBE\u2019s fifth global market presence outside of South Korea, having expanded into China, Japan, the United States and Latin America<\/a> over the past few years.<\/p>\n In a statement<\/a> cited by Maeil Business Newspaper, <\/i>HYBE said: “Chairman Bang\u2019s usual philosophy is that K-pop should not simply mean music as a genre of pop, but should become a methodology in itself that accurately identifies the public\u2019s tastes and creates super IP based on super fans.\u201d<\/p>\n Bang Si-hyuk predicted that \u201cthe strategy of securing a foothold in the world\u2019s major music markets and applying this methodology is producing results, and if the current trend continues, the landscape of the global music market dominated by the Big 3 global companies will change significantly,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n His vision to globalize the K-pop method of discovering talent has led to the launch of a girl group called KATSEYE<\/b> in the US last year through HYBE\u2019s partnership<\/a> with Universal Music Group<\/b>\u2018s Geffen Records<\/b>.<\/p>\n According to HYBE CEO Jason Jaesang Lee<\/strong>, KATSEYE \u201chad the best year in 2024 with their debut album\u00a0SIS,<\/i>\u201d with their title track\u00a0Touch<\/i>\u00a0appearing on the\u00a0Billboard<\/em>\u00a0Bubbling Under Hot 100 for two weeks and the Global Song Chart for 13 consecutive weeks.<\/p>\n In February, HYBE teamed up with<\/a>\u00a0Grammy Award winner Ryan Tedder<\/b> to search for and create a new boy group. The venture aims to establish a \u201cnew standard for artist development\u201d by combining HYBE\u2019s K-pop training infrastructure with Tedder\u2019s expertise in hit-making and artist development, according to an announcement at the time.<\/p>\n In April, HYBE Latin America partnered<\/a> with Spanish-language television network Telemundo to launch Pase a la Fama, <\/i>described as a first-of-its-kind music competition series focused on creating the next great\u00a0<\/b>Regional Mexican band.<\/p>\n The expansion into India is a significant growth opportunity for HYBE.\u00a0India is the most populous country in the world, with more than\u00a01.42 billion<\/strong>\u00a0people, according to the\u00a0US Census Bureau<\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0India is the world\u2019s 15th largest recorded music market <\/b>by annual revenues, according to data<\/a> from the IFPI.<\/p>\n The reported expansion also comes amid increased M&A activity in the market.<\/p>\n Last month, Reservoir Media<\/b>\u2019s newly established Mumbai subsidiary, PopIndia<\/b>, struck its first catalog deal in the market with Musicraft Entertainment<\/b>, less than a month after its launch in India.<\/p>\n In March, Primary Wave<\/b>\u2019s joint venture with Times Music<\/b> acquired<\/a>\u00a0two companies in India.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Warner Music Group <\/b>recently made a minority investment<\/a> in live entertainment and ticketing platform SkillBox<\/b>, and acquired<\/a> artist management and live events company E-Positive.<\/b><\/p>\n Elsewhere, Universal Music\u00a0India<\/b> recently took a\u00a0majority stake<\/a>\u00a0in Indian music and entertainment company TM<\/b> Ventures<\/b>, while\u00a0Sony<\/b> Music<\/b>\u00a0acquired<\/a>\u00a0a major catalog in India from\u00a0Eros<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The expansion represents the next stage of what HYBE calls its \u201cmulti-home, multi-genre strategy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":235224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[129816,4298],"class_list":["post-235123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-hybe","tag-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235123"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235258,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235123\/revisions\/235258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n