Mavin Records first secured a multi-million dollar investment from Kupanda Holdings, a joint venture between Kupanda Capital and TPG Growth, in 2019. According to Rima Tahini, head of A&R at Mavin and senior associate at Kupanda Capital, this was the biggest institutional investment in African entertainment at the time. The capital influx and strategic partnership helped Mavin Records, part of Mavin Global, build the company into what it is now: a global company with over 90 staff who work in core creative capacities and across more corporate departments like marketing and partnerships. In her 2024 interview with I Said What I Said podcast, Tahini explained how Kupanda helped to build the label’s structure: 

We had to learn the things that applied to us because there was no model for us to look at. Of course, we have people like Jazzy and Tega who’ve been here for so long. Jazzy’s gone through several iterations of this work, from Mo’Hits to Mavin and now Mavin Global, so he’s seen a lot and there’s a lot I personally learnt from him and Tega…For an artiste, it’s about their career, but you as an executive, you want to make sure that the label has a structure that lasts even beyond that particular artiste, so you can’t build it around one person. You have to make sure your hiring is in place, your structure is in place, you’re thinking about your ROI, you’re thinking about what makes sense. We had to look for the North Star, for the direction the industry was headed in. 

While many other Nigerian record labels focused on raising revenue typically through bookings and performances, Kupanda laid emphasis on boosting Mavin’s streaming volumes, both as a more sustainable source of revenue and as a tool for global penetration. Of course, when the world came to a standstill during the pandemic in 2020, the value of pulling in streaming revenue became very glaring and Mavin seemed to be ahead of the curve. Still, even with the advent of Nigeria’s streaming era, there are infrastructural challenges, such as low internet penetration rates and access to smartphones, that limit the amount of revenue that can be made locally, highlighting even more the need for global penetration. Agbeyo informed me of Mavin’s desire to ‘infiltrate the markets that can bring about immense streaming volumes,’ and come back to invest the returns into the development and empowerment of Nigeria’s institutions and people. 

Moreover, unlike the time of the GOOD Music deal, the global successes of Davido, Burna Boy and Wizkid at the time Kupanda came into the picture showed that the market was more than ripe for Afrobeats music. Talks of Mavin’s interest in seeking a foreign investment deal started in October 2023, when it was reported that the company was valued at over $125 million. This is an astronomical leap for Don Jazzy who, in 2005, tried to sell Mo’Hits for just N1-2 million (then about $7,500-15,000) to Storm Records, a pioneer indigenous Nigerian record label. At the start of 2024, UMG came out on top in the bidding race for Mavin, kicking out former majority stake owner TPG Growth and leaving Kupanda as a minority investor and strategic adviser.  

Agbeyo believes the budding partnership between Mavin and UMG will expose Mavin to UMG’s expansive network of marketing, technological and human resources that will no doubt elevate the label. ‘We can collaborate on music marketing initiatives with other music industry professionals on their end, as opposed to our partnership with TPG where a lot of the knowledge had to come from us because they aren’t a music business,’ he explained. Moreso, in his public statement, Oghenejobo expressed confidence in the partnership, given the ‘proven history of collaborations’ between the two companies. This includes Mavin’s music distribution partnership with Virgin Music Group, a division of UMG.  

But Mavin is not the only party benefiting from this partnership. UMG has been trying to gain ground in the Nigerian (and African) music industry for years. The global company first crossed Nigeria’s borders in 2018, when it set up an office for Universal Music Group Nigeria (UMGNG) in Lagos. The new division was charged with overseeing UMG’s operations in West Africa, and its launch was marked with the signings of Nigerian alternative—AKA ‘Alté’—artists, Tay Iwar and WurlD, and Ghanaian artists, Cina Soul and Stonebwoy. That same year, UMG became the first major global music company to license its music catalogue to Boomplay, which was said to be Africa’s largest streaming platform at the time. Yet, plagued by leadership issues and a host of other challenges, UMGNG has failed to attain the expected level of success on the continent. Thus, while UMG will advance Mavin’s global reach, Mavin will concretize UMG’s stake in the fast-growing African music industry by helping them navigate its peculiar dynamics.  

Responding to fears that a majority stake being held by an American music company might dilute the creative authenticity of Mavin’s products, Agbeyo told me, ‘From an investor point of view, I don’t think there’s any reason why they’ll say they want to change the working formula. If there’s going to be any changes on that, I’m sure everyone will be made aware, but for now, with the information available to me, Mavin will control the outcome. We are in Nigeria, we are in Lagos, we are a label that is culturally African and I think the music will always reflect that.’ To buttress his point, it is worth noting that since Tiwa Savage signed an exclusive recording agreement with UMG after she left Mavin amicably in 2019, the Afrocentric quality of her music has remained undiluted. Nonetheless, the impact of this partnership on the identity of Nigeria’s biggest record label remains to be seen. 

Aside from increasing its digital footprint, Agbeyo revealed that the coming years will see Mavin Global collaborate more with the sports and film industries. For film especially, the company hopes to partner with industry giants to make the intersection between music and film more seamless. Mavin also has plans to expand its merchandizing line, Culture Havyn, which was launched on its 10th anniversary in 2022. In Agbeyo’s words, the goal for Mavin Global is ‘not just financial gain, but also cultural impact’⎈