MUSIC MOGUL GULSHAN KUMAR REVISITED

Gulshan Kumar with Nadeem Shrawan 

Every 90s grown up would remember the moon faced ever smiling Gulshan Kumar who would appear in devotional videos on music channels. He had what one could term an meteoric rise and eventual tragic end. Revisiting a man who defied all Bollywood norms and emerged as an undisputed music mogul notwithstanding the politics and crab mentality prevailing in the industry. 

Gulshan with daughter Tulsi 

Would you believe Gulshan was a small time obscure fruit seller in the DaryaGanj area of Delhi in his struggling years? His unbeatable devotion to music and the divine prompted him to move to Bombay and plan a meticulous strategy to build an music empire. A smooth operator, Gulshan started his music label Super cassette industries aka Tseries focusing on aggressive marketing. In fact his rise can well be an eminent case study for management students. 

With HMV monopolising the music market in the 80s it was unthinkable to breakthrough but Gulshan not just equalled the competition he also overpowered it. He very strategically exploited the loopholed copyright act section 52 (1) (J) which states you can copy an original work of music but there’s no infringement in case you provide a letter of intention to the copyright holder. Gulshan manipulated this clause smartly and released cover versions of retro songs wherein his favourite singers sang their versions of earlier hits like Kumar Sanu singing Kishore Kumar’s songs, Anuradha for Lata Mangeshkar, Sonu Nigam for Rafi and so on. 

Gulshan pictured at a recording studio. Singer Anuradha also in the frame. 

His experiment was super successful, cassettes were selling like hot cakes much to the dismay of powerful music companies and other music producers. With Aashiqui (1990) setting the music charts on fire Tseries was on an all time high. While professionally Gulshan maintained diplomatic relations with all his contemporaries he was shrewd enough to displace all competitors. Tseries emerged as the number one music label in 90s pushing a four decade old HMV to second position. 

The location where Gulshan was assassinated. 

By the mid 90s Gulshan banking heavily on film albums, music concerts and devotional releases built up an empire of 350 crore!! He emerged as the highest tax paying music supremo at that time. But the happiness was short lived. He ruffled too many feathers when the underworld (at their notorious peak) demanded ransom from him in 1997, he’s one of the few (besides Rajiv Rai) who refused to pay up. This is said to have instigated the gullible ego of underworld honchos. In august 1997 in broad daylight right outside his most frequented temple in Mumbai, Gulshan was assassinated, eye witnesses claim he was frantically running for his life with bullets hitting all over his body. 

Gulshan’s body at the hospital after the shoot out. 

As is the case with many unsolved mysteries in Bollywood, in Gulshan’s case as well there were various stories, one about the ransom and the other alleged music composer Nadeem Saifi( Nadeem Shrawan fame) of conspiring the murder. It was alleged that Nadeem and Gulshan had a fallout and the former wanted to bump off the latter with underworld intervention. Nadeem fled to the UK never to return back but claimed he was innocent. Over the years Gulshan’s kin have grown his Tseries empire by leaps and bounds, it is even today the number one music label in India and has branched internationally as well. Unfortunately Gulshan the pioneer of music marketing is not alive to witness his dream project spreading the wings victoriously. 

All images courtesy: India Today archives and Yahoo Im