Loony Tunes

There are some things Dave Hui won't talk about: the number of singers he employs, how much they earn, even what they do when not crooning. "I guess I'm a little paranoid, as a businessperson," says the soft-spoken 30-year-old, talking about Taj Tunes with such care that he takes more than an hour to eat half a burger at Z Square on Commonwealth Avenue. "I don't want to give away too much competitive information." It's an instinct he no doubt acquired through his full-time job as a—well, he won't really say what he does with his days. Hui works with an investment fund and pursues "entrepreneurial projects," and won't reveal more. Before that, he was a management consultant who spent 12-hour workdays helping corporate execs become more successful. Hui's busy schedule was what first led him to explore outsourcing. He decided to outsource his life.

Hui wanted someone to take care of daily mundanities—managing frequent-flier miles, calling customer service, choosing Christmas gifts—so he could spend his free time on friends and fun. He first sniffed out this possibility in 2004, when his MIT business school class took a research trip to India. As it turns out, the country's new economy hums with more than just call centers. There's a burgeoning industry there called "remote executive assistance," which provides cheap personal aides for any task.

Hui hired one in 2006, from a Bangalore company called Get Friday. Soon his assistant was doing everything from compiling newspaper headlines to waking Hui up in the morning. Things were good. Hui had more time to socialize; his consulting work picked up. Friends joked that he had essentially bought a buddy—but he found a way to needle them back. When one had a birthday, Hui instructed his assistant to call the birthday girl and wish her a good one. The assistant got creative, and sang her a random ditty in his native tongue. The friend cracked up. And Hui, as always, saw a business opportunity.

The marketing appeal was obvious. "It's like outsourcing on steroids: Let's see how far we can take this thing," he says. And so, in February 2007, he launched Taj Tunes as a way to make a little extra cash, with his remote assistant singing all the songs. (That made startup costs nearly nil, considering he already paid the assistant around $10 an hour.) The gimmick quickly caught on, flying around the Web. Soon thousands of orders were being placed from across the country, and Hui hired more singers—which wasn't a financial strain, either.

Like just about everything else, singing telegrams in India can dramatically undercut the cost of a similar service in America. You want a man in a 6-foot lobster suit showing up at your parents' home to wish them a happy anniversary? A place like Woburn-based LMPK Events charges up to $175 for the pleasure. Hui, meanwhile, can find Indian laborers to work for a few bucks an hour, and have them place calls through near-free Internet phone services. Hui charges $5 a song and easily turns a profit. That's not to say the guy in the lobster suit will soon be out of work, though. Taj Tunes isn't like any old remote tech-support service, replicating American jobs in another country. It is, perhaps, the first service that's appealing only because it's outsourced, which makes it a different product from LMPK's telegrams. Nobody, after all, would pay to hear some bad American singer. We get that for free every week on Fox.

Taj Tunes, in fact, adds a handful of jobs to the American economy. Songs with lyrics like India is where our home is/Across the seas our very wish is were penned by Thomas Chan last year in a soundproofed bedroom in Quincy. A Berklee grad who sells computer software by day and writes songs by night, he met Hui at church, and has since become one of three local composers Hui taps to write these things. (Hui pays by the song, but, again, won't say how much.) All the songwriters know which notes to hit: A Taj tune is best when it's simple, almost childlike, because innocence is part of the charm.

Taj Tunes' website now offers a rotating menu of 17 absurdist songs to fit any mood or occasion, including romance (I love it when we hug and kiss—smooch!/And even when we fight, you jerk!), congratulations (Congrats! Hats off to you/You deserve a cookie. Okay, maybe two!), and the need to call one's mother (Show her how much you care/Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da!).

The Indian singers have had trouble learning complicated melodies. Sometimes, Hui says, it takes them a week or so to get it right. To teach them his songs, Chan records himself singing and then digitally corrects his voice so that it's pitch-perfect, ensuring that the singers hear a tune exactly as it's supposed to be sung. Not that it makes much of a difference. "I hear them and I'm like, Oh my gosh, they're singing the melody all wrong," he says. "But you know what? I'm listening to this, and it's funny, and I'm laughing. This isn't high class. I'm not writing a symphony here."