Yash Rohra flips the script at Represent

MUMBAI: The music marketing maven announced last month he has left Warner Music India to become head of marketing and streaming at Represent, the Mumbai-based artist management outfit that Forbes crowned a “top Indian music startup”. It is a strategic pivot that swaps Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa for Anuv Jain and MC Stan—and international promotion for global export.

Rohra’s Warner stint was nothing short of spectacular. He helped shepherd Ed Sheeran’s Sapphire  featuring Arijit Singh to number one, watched Rosé and Bruno Mars’s APT climb the charts, and oversaw Coldplay’s Indian invasion, which netted over 200m streams across all platforms in three months—one of the biggest jumps for an international act visiting India. He also championed Taambdi Chaamdi, the first proper Marathi electronic hit, taking it from viral moment to certified superhit.

The work brought him close to the machinery of global music promotion: collaborations with Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla, partnerships with streaming platforms, and the arcane art of turning international releases into Indian chart-toppers. Rohra name-checks a dozen colleagues who “pushed, trusted, and shaped” his thinking on marketing and music. It reads like a Warner Music India roll call.

But Represent offered something Warner could not: the chance to reverse-engineer the playbook. Instead of importing hits, Rohra now exports them. His new roster includes Jonita Gandhi, Anuv Jain, MC Stan, Yashraj, Lost Stories and Jay Dhir—a motley crew of independent Indian artists who have built followings without major label backing. Represent, led by Aayushman Sinha (another Forbes-anointed “new age entrepreneur”), manages over 20 artists and has racked up more than 1,000 global brand collaborations. The company also dabbles in creator management, consulting, strategic partnerships and investments in direct-to-consumer businesses.

Rohra’s career arc traces the evolution of India’s music industry. He started as a music programmer and curator at BookMyShow in 2017, creating 1,200-plus international playlists and analysing user listening patterns to boost ticket sales for concerts and films. A stint in digital marketing at Mindstorm followed, managing accounts for Bath & Body Works India and Parachute’s Africa and Russia operations. Then came Hoopr, India’s first music licensing platform, where he spent two years as senior manager for music and content acquisition, building a library of 5,000-plus tracks with over 300 artists and launching “Sing To Sync”, India’s first toplining contest.

Warner was the natural next step—a chance to work with the biggest names in the business and learn how global music promotion actually functions. Now comes the hard part: applying those lessons to Indian artists trying to break international markets. It is one thing to promote Coldplay in India. Quite another to promote MC Stan in Los Angeles.

If Rohra can pull it off, he will have cracked the code that has eluded most Indian independent labels. If not, well, at least he got to work with Ed Sheeran first. The man knows his way around a chart.