We did not set out to sell musical instruments.
In the 1990s we ran an online gifting service. Indians living in the United States would order something for their family back home, and we would arrange it and deliver it here. Straightforward work, and nothing to do with music.
Then one of those customers asked whether we could do it the other way round. He wanted a tabla set, sent to him in the US. We found him one, packed it, and shipped it. Then someone else asked. We started listing on eBay, and the orders did not stop.
What turned it into a business was our founder moving to the UK. Walking into shops there, he saw Indian instruments selling for several times what he knew they cost in India, and knowing that number changes what you see. The gap was not craftsmanship or shipping. It was distance, and the number of hands in between.
So he formalised it and built the website. That was 1999. Twenty-seven years later, the job is still the same: find the instrument that is genuinely worth owning, and get it safely to someone on the other side of the world without the markup that used to be the price of living far away.
Why we started making our own
The first thing we built was a workshop, not a catalogue.
We began with tabla, working directly with craftsmen, because we had learned something quickly that anyone in this trade learns: when you buy an instrument from someone else and sell it on, there is a ceiling on what you can offer. You can control which instruments you accept and which you send back, but you cannot control how they were made. Past a certain point you cannot give a customer better quality at a better price, because two margins have to live inside the same instrument.
Making them ourselves removed that ceiling. Tabla first, then slowly the rest, until the workshop was building harmoniums, sitars, tanpuras, shruti boxes and bansuris under one roof.
It did not have a name for a long time. Maharaja Musicals came later, when we were formalising things and it made sense for what we built to carry a brand of its own. The work came first and the name caught up with it.
We work in seasoned Indian woods, teak, kail and mirindi, because they hold their shape through a Delhi summer and a Chicago winter. Every harmonium is tuned to A440 and checked again on the day it is dispatched, and every bellows is tested for air leaks, because a leak you cannot hear in the workshop becomes a sustain you cannot hold six months later.
Before your instrument is packed, we film it playing. The actual one, not a stock photo.
The makers we represent
The other half of this business is other people's work, and it exists because no single workshop should pretend to be the best at everything.
Our founder, Gagan Bawa, already loved this music and already knew these instruments. He knew what a good harmonium sounded like and what a bad one was hiding, which is not something you can learn from a supplier list. So he went to find the people making them. One maker at a time, workshop by workshop, he travelled to meet them, learned how each of them worked, and earned the right to represent them. Most of those relationships have now lasted decades.
Bina. Monoj Kumar Sardar. Paul & Co. Kanai Lal & Sons. Mukta Das. Hemen & Co. Jayanta Sengupta. Hiren Roy and Barun Ray. Vijay and Haridas Vhatkar. Pritam Singh. Rikhi Ram. Sarfuddin. Akbar Mian & Bros.
These are small workshops, most of them family run, several of them generations deep. They do not have export departments or sales teams, and they do not take on a seller because a form was filled in.
The harder skill is narrower than knowing the names. Any of these makers builds across a wide range, and not every instrument in that range is the one you want. Knowing which particular harmonium from a workshop's line is worth owning, and which to leave alone, is what we are actually selling. If the honest answer is that a cheaper instrument suits you better, or that ours does, we will tell you so.
How buying from us works
You place an order and nothing is charged. We check the instrument is genuinely available, then message you on WhatsApp or by email within one working day with payment details.
It is slower than a one-click checkout, and it is deliberate. We would rather tell you an instrument is three weeks away than take your money and go quiet.
Where we ship
Musicians in more than fifty countries play instruments that left this workshop. Our prices are in US dollars and include shipping to the United States. Everywhere else, shipping is calculated at checkout by weight and destination. Import duties, where your country charges them, are payable on delivery and are not included in the price.
Instruments made to be played, not displayed.