Producer Duo MadStarBase’s Bollywood Bootlegs Get Official Stamp of Approval From Saregama
The Delhi-based DJ and production crew is all set to release four remixes on India’s oldest label this month.
The Delhi-based DJ and production crew is all set to release four remixes on India’s oldest label this month.
Celebrated for their audacious Bollywood bootlegs, MadStarBase (made up of Neal Sekhri and Anant Ahuja) has secured a landmark agreement with India’s oldest music label, Saregama, for their upcoming release.
The label will officially release four remixes in June 2026, marking a pivotal shift for the duo, whose viral remixes once faced copyright strikes but now command formal industry recognition. This collaboration follows their successful 2024 label deal with Universal Music, further cementing their transition from underground disruptors to legitimate label-sanctioned artists.
The rollout kicked off last week with a stripped-down reimagining of RD Burman’s psychedelic masterpiece ‘Dum Maaro Dum,’ sung by the legendary Asha Bhosle. This is followed today by the arrival of ‘Saat Samundar,’ a 90s synth-pop anthem that has long been a secret weapon for global selectors and now receives an official, floor-shaking bass glow-up across all major streaming services.
“It rarely happens that illegal bootlegs get signed by a major label,” the duo explains, adding with just a tinge of pride, “Ours did. What started as throwaway edits to include in just our sets became recognised as valuable IP, legitimised by the labels themselves.”
In 2016, Madstarbase started crafting Bollywood edits to play in their own sets, but little did they know they would be the flag bearers of the desi wave movement come 2026. At a time when Bollywood music had lost cultural cachet with young Indians, MadStarBase revitalized these tracks, infusing them with an unprecedented coolness that transformed nostalgia into dancefloor mayhem.
“When we played the edits at our first set at Magnetic Fields in 2017, the crowd reaction showed we’d tapped into something the scene had left behind but people still loved,” the duo recalls.
“I grew up listening to Bollywood music so much that the flavour and vibes of old school Bollywood music melted into my brain. We wanted to show love and give flowers to the culture that raised us, and not run away from it,” Neel adds.
For years, MadStarBase’s sassy bootlegs found its audience via YouTube, DJ sets and radio shows around the world. Dancefloors erupted and the YouTube comments section exploded whenever one of their creative edits were uploaded. They turned melodic nostalgia into viral, floor-shaking, bass-heavy, club-centric moments and made a whole generation fall in love with Bollywood all over again.
A standout success was their viral take on ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba,’ which has garnered millions of streams. Despite facing early copyright hurdles, the track persisted through multiple re-uploads, with a single version currently exceeding 25 million views.
They have used every weapon in their arsenal of sonic tricks, from R&B hip-hop to dubstep to reggae, funk and global grooves to craft songs that have amassed millions of streams on YouTube and established a widely imitated stylistic blueprint. They are symbolic of an India that code switches at will and can move between contrasting sonic worlds with effortless fluidity.
Their Mollywood series flipped the biggest Bollywood tracks of all time into dancefloor bangers, tunes that received support from global tastemakers and DJs like Diplo, DJ Craze, Flowdan, Manara, and Nina Las Vegas, and earned them Boiler Room (2023) appearances and spots at festivals like Dialled In in London (September 2024). Their cultural impact reached a pinnacle in 2024, when they represented India’s independent electronic music scene at the India House at the Paris Olympics.
The culture chameleons were also announced as Young Patron of the Year by the India Art Fair in 2022 and collaborated with the fair to introduce Mumbai gallery, Method, in a special exhibition titled ‘Fresh Produce’ during India Art Fair week, showing over 50 young Indian contemporary artists in the fields of fine art, photography, street art, digital art, and more.
Over the next two weeks, a remix will be released every Wednesday as the duo continues working on more remixes, collaborations and original music. While they still love the response their ideas get from the dancefloor, they’re candid that desi edits feel less novel now.
One of the projects that has the duo greatly excited is their collaboration with Keelaka Dance Company on the dance-theater production “Sakhi” that explores a friendship between Sita and Draupadi, two towering female figures in Hindu mythology. “Working with them, we’ve been mixing R&B, hip-hop, and electronic music with the traditional sounds of Bharatnatyam, and it just works in a way that feels really genuine,” he adds.
“That’s the kind of project we want to keep doing, where two worlds are actually talking to each other, not just sitting next to each other,” offers Neal.
All singles will be available across all streaming platforms, and you can follow MadStarBase on YouTube and Spotify.
For more music updates and new releases, follow TFword on Instagram | Facebook | X
You May Also Like:
Artists Coming to India in 2026-2027: Anyma, Gorillaz and More
