POLAND – 2025/03/11: In this photo illustration, the Hybe company logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
HYBE, the South Korean entertainment company behind K-pop group BTS and girl group KATSEYE, officially announced its India launch on social media this week.
The music juggernaut opened its Mumbai headquarters in September 2025, establishing its fifth international office alongside existing operations in Japan, the United States, Latin America, and China.
The expansion comes at a challenging time for the company. HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk is currently under investigation by South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service over allegations related to the company’s 2020 IPO, and was questioned by police for 13 hours in September 2025 regarding allegations of earning approximately $140 million in illicit profits.
Additionally, a Seoul court ruled in favor of HYBE’s ADOR subsidiary in late October, rejecting girl group NewJeans’ attempt to suspend their exclusive contract.
Despite these domestic challenges, the expansion into India comes as multiple global music companies increase their investments in the country.
Per the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, K-pop streaming in India grew by 362 percent between 2018 and 2023.
HYBE’s India Strategy
Bang Si-hyuk predicted that “the strategy of securing a foothold in the world’s 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,” according to Maeil Business Newspaper.
It’s a bold prediction, but HYBE’s track record suggests they know how to execute.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 07: KATSEYE attends VIP Celebration of Pandora Talisman Pop-Up Opening at The Grove in Los Angeles at The Grove on October 07, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images for Pandora Jewelry)
Getty Images for Pandora Jewelry
The company’s “multi-home, multi-genre strategy” involves achieving market dominance by integrating local culture and characteristics—an approach that’s already proven successful with KATSEYE, the US-based girl group formed through a partnership with Universal Music Group’s Geffen Records. KATSEYE member Lara Raj is Tamil-American.
The Indian branch plans to recruit artists through local auditions and establish a training system optimized for the Indian market, while also supporting HYBE artists’ activities in India. In essence, HYBE is bringing the K-pop playbook—intensive training, data-driven fan engagement, multimedia content strategies—to Indian talent.
A Gold Rush In The World’s Most Populous Nation
HYBE’s arrival is part of a broader wave of international investment washing over India’s music industry, which has. been particularly intense since 2024.
Warner Music Group made a minority investment in live entertainment platform SkillBox and acquired artist management company E-Positive. Universal Music India took a majority stake in TM Ventures. Sony Music acquired a major catalog from Eros. In April, Reservoir Media’s newly established Mumbai subsidiary, PopIndia, struck its first catalog deal with Musiccraft Entertainment. In March, Primary Wave’s joint venture with Times Music acquired two Indian companies.
Per music business analysis company Music Ally, the six biggest music companies in India saw their combined revenues grow by 6% to ₹3,843 crore in 2024, though growth was uneven. While T-Series, the largest label, saw revenues fall by nearly 6.4%, Warner Music India’s revenues spiked by 181%, Universal Music India grew 13%, and Sony Music India grew 4%.
The Monetization Challenge
Despite all this activity and investment, India’s music industry faces a fundamental challenge: converting massive audience size into sustainable revenue.
The country’s recorded music industry is currently worth ₹3,200 crore (around $378 million), and fell to 15th place in the IFPI’s global rankings in 2024 due to flat revenues. The issue isn’t engagement; India produces 20,000 to 25,000 original songs annually through a community of over 40,000 music professionals. The problem is monetization.
“Unless the subscription business takes off in India, we have a problem coming our way,” Vikram Mehra, Managing Director of Saregama, told Music Ally. Per the Music Ally report, paid on-demand subscriptions did spike from seven million in 2023 to 10.5 million in 2024, elevating subscription revenue to $81.81 million (INR 7 billion). But with 185 million streaming users, the paid conversion rate remains stubbornly low.
This is the puzzle that HYBE and other global players are betting they can help solve: bringing professional artist development, sophisticated marketing strategies, and global distribution networks to a market bursting with talent and audiences, but struggling to capture sustainable value.
What Comes Next
The Indian music industry is projected to reach ₹37 billion by 2026, up from ₹24 billion at the end of 2023, according to EY and FICCI. Whether that projection materializes depends largely on solving the monetization equation.
But what’s clear is that the global music industry has moved past viewing India as a future opportunity. The investments happening now — HYBE’s headquarters, the formation of boyband OutStation and girl group W.i.S.H, the flurry of acquisitions and partnerships — represent bets that India’s moment is now, not tomorrow.
For Indian artists, this means access to world-class training, production, and marketing resources that were previously out of reach. For music fans, it means more diverse content, bigger productions, and Indian acts positioned to compete on the global stage. And for investors, it’s a race to establish dominant market position before the value capture mechanisms fully mature.
HYBE’s entry is perhaps the most symbolic of these moves. The company that turned K-pop into a global phenomenon, the one that made Korean language music a Billboard mainstay and transformed how the industry thinks about fan engagement and artist development, is now turning that expertise toward India.
The next BTS might not just be singing in Korean at all.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahabraham/2025/11/04/bts-parent-company-hybe-just-launched-in-india-what-it-means/
