Indo Warehouse is playing it by ear

Co-founders of the record label open up to Cosmo India about expensive underwear, being workaholics, and performing at Coachella later this year.

- Ananya Rai

If Indo Warehouse isn’t already living in your head rent-free, it’s about to be. This New York-based South Asian collective is rewriting the rules of music. Fresh off an Asia tour, founders Kunal Merchant and Kahani took a breather (just barely) to chat with us.

Cosmo India: How did Indo Warehouse start, and how did the two of you meet?

Kahani: During COVID, I was in Mexico, immersed in a lot of electronic music, and experimenting with some sounds. When I got back to New York, there was a lot of interest in the music I had been posting. One thing led to another, and I ended up creating a Spotify playlist of the little South Asian electronic music that I could find. The playlist was called ‘Indo Warehouse’, so that’s the story behind the name. As soon as I published that, everyone was talking about it. And that’s when, a few months later, in February 2022, I thought, “Hey, let’s try this out in real life and play it to a live audience.” What I really wanted to do was bring people into a room to experience the music, because it’s one thing to hear it at home on Spotify, it’s another to actually be immersed in it.

Every month thereafter, we kind of doubled up in size.

As for Kunal and I meeting, we both lived in New York at the time but didn’t really know each other. I knew that Kunal was a DJ and an aficionado of electronic music in New York. Me, I didn’t come from a place of knowing anything about electronic music really, I came from a place of loving South Asian music. But knowing that he understood the width and gravity of electronic music, I was like, “I would love to get your feedback.”