To which country are the most harmoniums exported? You are unlikely to get the answer right. According to the manager of Harmonium World, a sleek and modern showroom of musical instruments in Lake Town Block A, it is Afghanistan.
“The Afghans love to play the harmonium. We used to sell 15-20 units every year. Now in the Taliban era, harmoniums are being smashed. So deliveries for Afghan clients are made to destinations in Europe or any third country where they travel,” said Tamal Das, who has, since 2023, been with the shop that sells harmoniums bearing the brand name RPGMA.com (an abbreviation of RP Global Music Academy).
Pakistan was also on the client list. “We used to send the instruments to their contacts in Dubai or Saudi Arabia. But after Pahalgam (terrorist attacks in Kashmir in the summer of 2025), business has stopped.”
Rupak Poddar, owner of Harmonium World, with Ghulam Ali (right)
There is enough demand from Europe for the international market to account for 60 per cent of Harmonium World’s business. “Germany tops the list,” Das said.
So much so that the owner, Rupak Poddar, has set up a base in Finland. Himself a harmonium player, who has played in a London concert with Ghulam Ali, Poddar has scaled up business from a small shop in Pragati Pally in Kalindi. “I hail from a village in Malda. We started making harmoniums even before I set up our first shop in 2020. The new showroom was opened in 2024,” said the 43-year-old entrepreneur, speaking to The Telegraph Salt Lake from Helsinki.
The telecommunications engineer, a Techno India alumnus, went to Finland in 2016 to work on a project for a software company and stayed on even after quitting. “I like the strong social security in the Nordic countries,” he said.
His presence on the continent helped bolster sales across Europe and he set up the company’s European headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia. “Our business adheres to all the laws of the European Union,” he said.
His client blocs include neo-Hindu devotees, mostly of non-Indian origin in Germany, presumably for kirtan sessions. Non-resident Indian families also procure harmoniums to give their children a sense of Indian musical culture.
Quality control
On settling in Finland, Poddar found that European customers were unhappy with the standard of instruments coming from India. “There are thousands of harmonium-makers across India but most are below par. I researched how to improve the sound and realised seasoned teakwood would make a difference.”
Now the company sources wood from doors and windows from old houses being demolished. “The wood we use now for our exports guarantees top quality. In countries with cold weather, lesser quality will not do,” Poddar said.
A harmonium at The Harmonium World in Lake Town
The company provides a tuning kit and guidance over video call. “In fact, we offer remotely supervised unboxing on delivery,” he said.
The RPGMA factory near Digha buys reeds from Gujarat and Nagpur. “Palitana, near Bhavnagar in Gujarat, is the hub of Indian reeds,” the manager points out.
There used to be Paris and German reeds as well but since World War II, they are hard to lay hands on, he said. “Sometimes we get a few from kabadiwalas who buy discarded harmoniums from people’s houses. A harmonium with Paris reeds made of iron costs as much as Rs 1.4 lakh minus taxes,” he said. Das said he had seen century-old iron reeds without a speck of rust.
A harmonium takes about 50 days to make but at Harmonium World, it is not dispatched as soon as it is manufactured. “We do a three-phase tuning,” said Poddar. That means for a couple of weeks, the instrument is played for an hour daily to fine-tune it. “That’s his job,” said Das, pointing to young Amritesh Pandey playing away and doing a sound check on a three-line nine scale changer seated on the floor at a corner. “This is the most popular model,” said the lad from Bihar, who left home for Bengal for the love of music without his family’s approval and is learning to play the harmonium on the job.
The company’s manufacturing repertoire includes harmoniums that are two-line, non-scale-changers and four-line 13 scale-changers. “Some people order wider, five-line harmoniums but I think those require too much air which disturbs the sound balance. It is a matter of customer preference, though.”
The showroom sells tabla and guitar too — tanpura, another staple of Indian music shops even a decade ago, has faded with free apps available online to provide background drone support — but the focus is on harmoniums.
Poddar, who quit his IT job to focus on his music business, recalled how friends had discouraged him when he started out. “They said it’s a dead instrument. But demand is on the rise. We sell many more harmoniums than we repair. Even if band music reigns in popularity, classical and semi-classical music will always be there. And the electronic sound of keyboards can never be a replacement,” he signed off.