Playing at Coachella 2025, EDM collective Indo Warehouse spotlight South Asian culture

At a live DJ event one Friday night in January, roughly 600 people at Soho House Hong Kong in Sheung Wan grooved to electronic dance music (EDM) interwoven with a distinctly South Asian sound. Periodically, Bollywood anthems such as Patakha Guddi and Chaiyaa Chaiyaa, and Maghron La from season 15 of TV music show Coke Studio Pakistan, emerged over the house beats. The crowd’s approval shone as they enthusiastically sang along to the recognisable hits. This fresh sound was courtesy of Armaan Gupta, aka Kahani, and Kunal Merchant, who co-founded the dance music collective Indo Warehouse in 2022 in New York, where they live. It was the first time they had played in Hong Kong, coming fresh from a sold-out tour in the United States. Given the city’s sizeable South Asian community and the collective’s exposure on social media, the enthusiastic response on January 17 was not surprising. “A lot of people from Hong Kong sent us video messages of them pre-partying to our Brooklyn Mirage sets before they went out,” Merchant says. “They were at home, but watching our shows on YouTube.” The rise of Indo Warehouse comes at a time that is seeing a resurgence of techno, house and other EDM alongside club and rave culture, especially in post-pandemic Asia. From home-grown collectives and clubs such as Bad Times Disco in Hong Kong, Budots in Manila and Vinahouse in Vietnam, to larger-scale festivals like Thailand’s Wonderfruit and Creamfields in Hong Kong, the desire to experience EDM music collectively seems to be on the rise in the region. With Indo Warehouse putting a South Asian twist on this trend, their music appeals to people in the region who are not necessarily into the genre. “We are not the first South Asian electronic artists – absolutely not,” Kahani says. “But what we have done is opened it up, and made it more relatable to the masses.” Merchant adds that their audience also spans age groups. “We’ve seen multiple generations attend shows together – a daughter, a mom and grandmother – three generations.” It all began during the pandemic, when Kahani escaped New York and moved to Mexico. On a beach in Tulum, he first felt fully the depth of electronic music. “I became obsessed, on this beautiful beach, with 500 or so beautiful people from all over the world,” he says. There, he was exposed to what he describes as a more “mature” form of electronic music, and he began to imagine what it would be like to add a layer of South Asian music. “I was hearing these beats, but in my head, I was singing [Pakistani singer] Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on top of it, because that’s just where my brain went.” The impact of the experience, and the subconscious layering of Khan’s Sufi melodies over electronic beats, sparked the idea for Indo Warehouse. Kahani grew up in an Indian household in New York, where he was constantly exposed to various kinds of South Asian music. Through one channel or another – including mixing Punjabi and Western music for his university dance team – he always managed to engage with it as a hobby. It was only after going to Tulum and quitting his job in tech venture capital that he decided to pursue music seriously. Wanting to test out his idea in New York, he enlisted Merchant to help develop and launch the project. Merchant, who grew up in Texas, had always been a fan of house music, and had extensive experience as a DJ. Merchant had also worked for a company called Desi Hits in the mid-2000s, which spotlighted South Asian artists in North America and the UK. The company did the first major push of UK- and US-based South Asian artists, including the likes of Jay Sean, one of the first British Punjabi artists to reach global stardom, cemented by the release of his 2009 single “Down” featuring Lil Wayne. While initially sceptical of Kahani’s intention, Merchant attended one of his early parties and was about to leave when he heard someone singing classical Indian music over a house beat. “It stopped me in my tracks, and I thought it was amazing. More than that, it sounded like he was doing something different, and that, to me, really stood out.” Capturing a novel sound as a result of fusing two familiar genres of music became the goal. After several months of conversation and exchange, Indo Warehouse was formed. They played their first set for a party of 200 people at the beginning of 2022. By the end of that year, they were playing for 2,000. We’re going to have an opportunity [at Coachella] to showcase our culture to the world in the way we have been building and creating it Kunal Merchant In 2023 they played at Brooklyn Mirage for a crowd of 4,500 and went on to stage a sold-out, 11-city North American tour. In 2024 they started touring internationally, playing at venues from London to Dubai to India. The does not interweave their cultural heritage into just the music, but also into other creative facets, including dance and fashion. At their larger gigs, they often have South Asian dancers on stage alongside them and the two co-founders “almost exclusively wear Indian designers while performing”, Kahani says. Representation is just as much a responsibility for the pair as creating a platform that allows South Asian creatives and musicians to build sustainable careers. “Growing up in the West, I know there was and is so much South Asian diaspora talent, but no one’s telling us we can do it, so it’s often hidden,” Kahani says. One challenge they encountered was the lack of a definitive genre on platforms such as Spotify. “Growing up in Texas, Latin house was a big thing, and then a little later on Afro house came along, so I was wondering why Indo-House wasn’t a genre?” Merchant asks. “Six months after starting this, we became obsessed with learning about who is out there on the South Asian front, from the diaspora side who is really talented.” They are now working with a number of new artists, including Anvaya – comprised of husband-and-wife DJs and producers Kaushal and Sonia Majmudar – who infuse their sets with live singing. They will all perform at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California in April. In the past couple of years, several South Asian artists have made their debut at Coachella – one of the largest music festivals in the world – on their way to making waves around the world, including Diljit Dosanjh, Ali Sethi and Sid Sriram. One of the major acts at the 2025 festival will be Hanumankind, born in India’s Kerala state and raised in Houston, Texas. Playing at Coachella will be “the most significant moment” they have had, Merchant says. “We’re going to have an opportunity to showcase our culture to the world in the way we have been building and creating it, for a short amount of time now, and we really hope that will give purpose, strength and confidence to so many different South Asian creators who want to be musicians and those coming from other artistic standpoints as well.”

Playing at Coachella 2025, EDM collective Indo Warehouse spotlight South Asian culture

In Hong Kong last month, the Indian-American DJs behind Indo Warehouse talk about weaving their cultural heritage into their music