In the summer of 2002, five women clad in various shades of pink hit the TV screens on Channel V, singing and dancing to ‘Hum naye geet sunaaye’ (we sing new songs), promising to be the rebellious new voice of Y2K girls and young women. Store shelves were lined with pink cassettes exclaiming ‘Viva!’. It had eight songs written by the legendary poet Javed Akhtar, spanning the nature of love and relationships and a fierce desire for independence. The all-girl group was India’s first, and sold over 500,000 copies of its album, as per The Economic Times, before splitting a couple of years later.
In the two decades since, India has barely had an all-girl music group. Cassettes gave way to CDs, only to be rapidly replaced with the era of music downloads and now, streaming. Film music engulfed the music industry in the 2000s, before the resurgence of independent (but largely male) musicians in languages like Punjabi, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri, along with Tamil and Telugu.
Indian music occupies an entirely new universe today than it did at the turn of the century. Yet, the country is set to get a brand new all-girl band again, 25 years later, thanks to a billion-dollar South Korean music and media corporation.
Last September, Seoul-based Hybe Corp., the ‘Big Four’ music company behind Korean boy-band BTS, discreetly set up an office in Mumbai. This year, it began a series of auditions across 10 Indian cities and five global ones with a large Indian diaspora, hunting for the members of an all-girl band the company intends to build on the principles of K-pop hit acts.
Hybe’s best-known girl groups include Le Sserafim and their recent American co-creation Katseye.
Alongside Hybe, Korea’s ‘Big Four’ includes SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment.
But why is a South Korean multinational music label, with over $5 billion in market cap and $1.8 billion in annual revenue, setting up shop in India? Why is it building a ‘K-pop-style’ girl band in the country? Most important: what does this tell us about the future of the music business here?
The new wave
While teenaged girls and young women were reciting the lyrics to the music of Viva! and other American bands, a generation of young children were getting their first brush with Korean music instead.
“When I was a kid, I would watch the TV channel Animax a lot,” says 20-something Aditya Mhaske, a Mumbai-based executive who runs K-pop fan meets and other events in his spare time. “In those days, the early-2000s, Animax played K-pop music instead of ads during its ad breaks. That is how I got started. Then, I really got into K-pop because of Super Junior (a K-pop band founded by Hybe’s rival SM Entertainment in 2005).”
For an entire generation of young Indians, largely under 25 and brought up in the big cities, non-Indian music has always included the stars of Korea’s ‘Hallyu wave’—a term referencing the rise of South Korean culture across the world. For 22-year-old singer and dancer Payal Chaudhary, based in Mumbai, the first brush with Korean music was a little later than Mhaske’s Animax days.
“Gangnam Style (released 2012) was the first time I was introduced to a new culture,” she says. “I was in the 4th or 5th standard. I had watched the video on someone’s phone. I did not understand the lyrics but the music was so good! Every kid was dancing to it.”
Gangnam Style by Korean singer PSY was the first video on YouTube to ever reach 1 billion views, in less than six months from its release. Another four years later, Chaudhary and her friends were caught up in an entirely new wave of Korean music.
“Everything changed in 2016 when I first saw BTS,” she says. “That year, the band received a global award. When I saw the band members, I remember thinking the seven of them look the same.”
Cut to today, Chaudhary is waiting to hear back from the Mumbai audition of Hybe’s upcoming all-girl music group. This wasn’t her first audition for the Korean music industry though. In 2022 and 2023, JYP had also held auditions, looking for a K-pop idol from the country.
“I went to audition for them (JYP) in Andheri (a Mumbai suburb). I sang and danced well, but I was too overweight. I weighed 65kg back then. The Korean labels are very strict about their criteria—you have to be able to sing and dance, and you have to look a certain way,” Chaudhary says.
Determined to make it work, she worked hard on her physique in time for Hybe’s auditions. “I am 43kg now.”
Girl or boy?
Hybe Corp. has been keeping an eye on generational changes in India for years, waiting for the right time to set up camp in one of the world’s largest music markets.
“When we first said we will be entering the India market, people were surprised but also welcoming,” Dahae Lee, chief operating officer of Hybe India, told Mint in an interview. (Lee’s responses were translated in real time from Korean to English during the interview by a translator provided by Hybe).
“We decided to go into India not just because it is fast growing. We have been researching the market for a long time and looking for the optimal time to enter,” she says.
The surge of smartphone and internet use post-pandemic changed how Indians across age groups ‘consumed culture,’ Lee adds. “Looking at the streaming data, Indian independent artistes have seen rapid, exponential growth. Their face and individual identity are promoted. Regional and local language music has also grown. We believe we can elevate independent artistes in India to the global stage.”
For now, Hybe has two main goals. First, to systematically bring more Korean music to India and cultivate an audience here. And two, to set up the country’s first all-girl music group that can promote “harmony in diversity”.
“We want to make our girl group loved by every single Indian,” Lee says. “Our foremost goal is to support this first girl group. We are going to create music rooted in Indian authenticity and identity, but make them global artistes with a global audience.”
Auditions are still under way both online and offline and Hybe did not share a timeline for when the girl group may be ready.
But why an all-girl group and not a boy band like BTS? Lee, after all, worked with BTS in her previous roles at Hybe in Seoul.
“We had a very intense debate on whether to go with a girl group or a boy group,” she says. “I have worked with Seventeen and BTS and I thought a boy band would be a better option.”
However, the company commissioned market research firm Nielsen for a survey—it surveyed about 2,000 Indians. A qualitative survey was also conducted in six Indian cities.
The findings underlined the need for more female representation—young women had few female role models to look up to in entertainment.
“India really needs a girl group right now,” Lee stresses.
The masterclass
Hybe isn’t the only one to realise India is ready for an all-girl group. Music producer Mikey McCleary founded a four-member all-girl band Wish, which debuted their first song Lazeez in 2024. Late last year, music management company The Hello Group signed up Wish to manage the band.
The Hello Group has worked with major Korean music labels behind acts like BTS, and has an office in Seoul. When Hybe laid plans to enter India, Wish was one of the musical acts the company’s executives saw.
“When Hybe came into India last year, they did a bunch of masterclasses,” Hamza Kazi, head of artiste relations and development at The Hello Group India, says. “Wish was at one of those interactive sessions about two months ago. They spoke about how they built their identity, how they use fashion, and the themes they talk about when writing songs. They also performed two-three of their songs. It was great, also a sort of nod of approval for Wish.”
Kazi says Wish, as an all-girl group, occupies a wide gap in the Indian music scene but in the minds of an ordinary Indian fan, bands of young singers and dancers have become inextricably linked to K-pop.
“A lot of people confuse Wish for a K-pop band just because it’s a girl group,” Kazi says. “But if you listen to their music, it is not K-pop music at all, which has a very specific sound, ideology and ethos.”
That shows the chokehold that Korean music labels have on the concept of bands and how they have slowly altered the perception of musical bands across the world, and in India.
Once, the idea of bands was dominated by the American rock legends of the ’70s and ’80s and later, boy bands like Backstreet Boys while the best known all-girl pop music bands included the UK sensation Spice Girls and US superstar Beyoncé’s band Destiny’s Child. These acts defined mainstream music of the ’90s and influenced bands across the world, including pop bands in India in the early 2000s such as Viva! and A Band of Boys.
Now, artistes and fans alike associate bands with high-fashion dancing-singing performers. They know that getting into a K-pop band is highly competitive and the training rigorous—spanning singing and dancing lessons, personality development, media training, and cultivating a strong sense of identity that can, in turn, create extremely loyal fans.
Fandom of bands like BTS—who call themselves ARMY—and girl bands like Blackpink can be fierce. That world attracts not just fans like Mhaske and singers like Chaudhary, but also small-town performers like Shreya Lenka.
The girl from Jharsuguda
Lenka, who goes by the stage name Sriya, moved to Seoul in 2021 after she got through auditions to win a place in the band Blackswan. Sriya is from Jharsuguda, a town in Odisha, and is a trained Odissi dancer.
“There is a huge cultural difference between both the music industries,” she told Mint in an interview. “In India, we focus on one single person, the artiste. They (the music industry executives) want results. They will help you, but you have to do the work on your own.”
In contrast, Sriya says, Korean labels treat their bands as intellectual property (IP) and band members behave as teammates and colleagues. “Working in a musical group is very different because you have to communicate,” she says.
“You have to work with all personalities and cultures while doing your business. You have to understand everyone, communicate well, stand out, discipline yourself and go through intense training because you have to measure every single detail on stage,” she adds.
All of this must be done without sacrificing the artiste’s authenticity and by ensuring the music is rooted in their culture.
This complex architecture is all in service of building extremely loyal fandoms, the kind that can feed into sales of concert tickets, physical media including vinyls and CDs, and newer forms of IP monetization including feature-length documentaries on the bands and their members.
These revenue streams are more lucrative and endure longer in the long-term than money made from streaming, which can fetch as little as a few cents per stream. India’s music industry relies almost entirely on streaming and other digital rights.
In contrast, Hybe made more than 36% of its annual revenue in 2025 from ‘artiste indirect involvement’ revenue such as content, merchandise, and fan clubs, and another 34% from ads, public appearances, and concerts of their artiste roster.
Concerts, in particular, can change the fortune of large labels like Hybe. For example, after a loss-making first quarter in 2026, the company swiftly moved into profits largely due to BTS’ ongoing world tour for its latest album Arirang.
Hybe’s India entry and plans to make a new girl band are coming at a momentous time. It is bringing this newer, more global business model to the country as music listening habits change significantly.
Korean music and entertainment is no longer niche. A large number of Korean bands and individual artistes have come to India since 2014.
Some, like Sriya and her band Blackswan, performed at K-Town, a Korean music festival co-organised by JetAlive, the live events arm of gaming firm JetSynthesys. Suho of the popular K-pop band Exo, first visited India way back in 2015, and then returned in 2024 for a solo performance.
Besides, mainstream and niche Korean artistes have been making inroads into Indian audiences, collaborating with desi artistes and even featuring in ads and movies.
In June, Hybe’s Le Sserafim released a remix of their global hit Boompala with Punjabi singer-songwriter Guru Randhawa; the video has 1.2 million views. In August 2022, girl group Tribe released a song Memu Aagamu with singer-songwriter Armaan Malik and actor Allu Arjun for that year’s Coke Studio India.
Singer Aoora has featured in reality TV shows Bigg Boss and Jhalak Dikhhla Ja along with an Ekta Kapoor soap made for YouTube called Saas Bahu Aur Swaad. And in June last year, Crocs India released an ad for their shoes starring actor Sidhanth Chaturvedi and K-drama star Chae Soo-bin. Sriya’s band Blackswan returned to Odisha to shoot their song Karma in 2023; the video has over 10 million views.
Nothing permanent
Music industry executives say that at the core of the business model are young, Gen Z listeners—they are no longer permanent ‘fans’ of an artiste.
“Kids now don’t have favourite artistes or genres anymore,” The Hello Group’s Kazi says. “It is all mood-based—they listen to high-tempo stuff for workouts, rock while on a drive, and lo-fi [tracks] for background music. To market to that, artistes are trying a ‘pull strategy’ where you authentically put out music people gravitate toward, rather than using marketing for forced conversion.”
Fandom has never been more important to the business of music, Kazi says, and Korea’s biggest music labels have mastered the art of building it. Hybe owns a tech platform Weverse that lets fans connect with their favourite artistes via direct messages, watch them live, and buy their merchandise.
Weverse reported 14.4 million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2026.
Hybe’s Lee says Indian artistes also want to use Weverse; but the company will get to this line of business in India a little later. For now, the company’s aim remains focused—get the all-girl music band going.
(The Hybe brand is stylised by the company in all capital letters, as are the BTS album Arirang and the bands Le Sserafim, Katseye, Blackpink, Blackswan, and Exo. Wish is stylised as W.i.S.H, and Tribe as TRI.BE).
- $5 Billion: Hybe Corp’s market capitalization, alongside $1.8 billion in annual revenue, underscoring the massive scale of the South Korean firm.
- 14.4 million: Monthly active users on Weverse in Q2 2026, representing the direct-to-fan monetization model Hybe relies on beyond streaming.
- 10 million: Views clocked by the video of Karma thus far, a song by the band Blackswan that was shot in Odisha.