In April this year, playback legend Arijit Singh covered Garvit-Priyansh’s breakout hit “Kaahe Mose” at a Delhi concert. Singh said it was one of his favourite songs and asked the crowd to remember the duo’s name. A few weeks later, the Mumbai-based artists have been selected for the YouTube Music Foundry Class of 2026 – alongside pop group Outstation, North-East duo Antara & Ankita Nandy and singer-songwriter Damini Bhatla. The YouTube Foundry program provides emerging musicians with direct financial grants, dedicated mentorship, marketing support, and early access to platform features, helping them build sustainable careers and grow their fanbases on their own terms.
The Lucknow-Udaipur hailing duo composes, plays, sings, produces and records Classical inspired I-pop music together. One of four artists from the country chosen for the global artist-development program – that boasts an impressive roster of alumni like Dua Lipa, Rosalía and Arlo Parks – the 25-year-olds let Billboard India in on all the details of YouTube Music’s Foundry Class of 2026:
How are you feeling about being selected for the YouTube Music Foundry Class of 2026?
We had been hearing about YouTube Foundry from our friends for a couple of years now. This year we got to learn from our team at T-Series about the artist development program in which they select artists from all around the globe. It feels great to be a part of the four artists that have been chosen from India.
What are you excited about from what the program has to offer?
One thing we are very excited about is to be featured on billboards. We’ve been seeing them all over Mumbai recently, and we’re really grateful about that. We’re going tomorrow just to see the billboard again with our team and a group of friends.
We had never really focussed on YouTube but we always knew that YouTube has a lot of fans out there especially from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. We have always wanted to grow our fanbase there and develop it. Also, getting that global outreach is one of the best things that can be done for a specific artist. For example, if we’re Indian and we write and make music in Hindi, it’s a really big opportunity for us to get global recognition.
How did the selection process for the program happen?
There were multiple people who said we should get involved and apply for this. T-Series helped us out. There was an application put in and a couple of calls – Google Meets and all of that – to understand what our vision regarding music was and what we wanted to do with YouTube. Then we got selected for it.
What challenges do you think YouTube Music Foundry will help you overcome as artists?
Posting regularly – we realise the value YouTube has for us. Now through the program we’re getting access to early platform features, new features. We’re able to unlock the full potential of our YouTube channel and grow our audience there, which we didn’t know how to do earlier. The best part is ,we had been wondering how do we could push ourselves to put more content on YouTube and increase our reach. This basically gave us the push that we needed, an extra edge.
What is the end goal or aim you hope to achieve from this program?
One is global outreach. It’s very important so that people from all around the world can know about what kind of music you’re making. Second, is building your community on YouTube, because if we talk about listeners in tier-two or tier-three cities, they’re mostly on YouTube. They’re not on Spotify. So to get to the masses but also on the YouTube Shorts algorithm.
There are three other Indian artists in the Class of 2026. Will you be collaborating with any of them?
All of these artists, including us, have to perform at a YouTube nights sort of event. We’re not sure what will happen there but it will be a great opportunity to perform live in front of a lot of listeners. That’s also what we really like doing.
The Nandy sisters are amazing. Also, we’ve met Outstation a couple of times – it’s been fun. All these artists are doing something interesting.
It’s been a few weeks since Arijit Singh covered your song and gave you a shoutout. How does it still feel?
It still feels so fresh and surreal and overwhelming . We think about the moment, it was a beautiful thing. We are still motivated, seeing that again and again, to get back to music.
What has been a favourite memory of your journey together so far?
Our first song with T-Series was “Mere Ranjhana”. We made that song in one night. We still remember that night. I (Priyansh) was playing the guitar and Garvit came up with the melody. We just ended up making the whole song that night, it is still one of our most favourite songs of ours, and a favourite memory.
What has been your favourite song to perform?
We love being on stage. When the audience sings along it’s even better. “Theher Ja” we released recently. We personally love performing that.
So, what’s next? Any releases, tours?
There are two types of releases that we’re working on. One is singles or non-film music. We have been working on a lot of different songs at the same time. There are releases planned for the coming months. We really, really want to get into the film music side, so we have been working on that as well. So we really hope that comes out sometime soon and we’re able to show the world what we have been building for so long. We aren’t able to reveal much at this point, but we have things planned with Netflix.
We want to release an album. We will have the plan ready for it by maybe this year end or the first half of next year. We’re also thinking of doing a tour again next year with the name of that album. We’re still building on it.
