Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Lifelong Slasher | Roshan Abbas @ Kommune India
139 Plays4 years ago
He is a performing artist by heart, someone who hit the stage when he was merely 4 years old and guess what, he never got off!
A creator, writer, director and entrepreneur, he gets immense joy from words, phrases, and playing with them creatively.
When kids his age would play cricket after school, he would be found doing theatre.
He tells us that his mother always aspired for him to study at the best school and be equipped with a wholesome education and thus, he ended up completing his schooling at La Martiniere, Lucknow. As a kid, he thrived on extra-curricular and would never miss a chance to perform. He talks about the contribution of his teachers from La Martiniere who helped him groom at a very early and crucial stage of his life.
His foundation was firmly set in childhood and from thereon he never stopped dreaming.
Well, serendipity happened, and with finite resources and infinite passion, Roshan Abbas moved to Delhi and pursued his Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia Milia Islamia.
Always fascinated by arts and theatre, Roshan joined a professional theatre group in his college. After college, he kick-started his career as a radio jockey and TV host. A storyteller for life, and a multi-faceted personality, he founded his venture Kommune India in 2015, a Performance Arts Collective bringing art, brands and talent together.
Tune in to the episode for intimate, personal, unique, and honest stories from Roshan’s childhood, career, his first Radio show, and life as a creative entrepreneur.
Key insights from the episode:
- Influencing people with the power of words.
- Are creative people good at running companies?
- Growing a creative agency.
- Lessons on ‘Brand building’.
- Writing plays, conducting theatre workshops, and making films.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Let's take a look at the video. Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn. My name is Roshan Navas. I am
00:00:29
Speaker
a slasher by profession, as I say, because I don't have one. I have about 14, 15 different careers. So I always say it's radio slash TV slash theater slash film slash entrepreneur slash commune slash glitch. But in a word, I think I'm in that part of my life now that I connect people to possibilities.
Roshan's Versatile Career Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
But deep inside, I'm still a performing artist. So performing artists who connects people to possibilities might be a good space to sit.
00:00:59
Speaker
Our guest today has had a career that closely mirrors the way India has developed over the last 30 years. Way back in the 90s when private TV and radio channels entered the country was when he also started his career. First, a radio jockey and then as a television host. But unlike most traditional TV stars, our guest today, Roshan Abbas was not one to be restricted into one role.
00:01:24
Speaker
He is someone who has donned multiple hats, be it as a radio and TV host or a Bollywood movie director or as the co-founder of two very successful marketing companies which have been acquired at a valuation of millions of dollars. Listen on as Akshay Tath gets a peek into the mind of a restless creator who never stops dreaming.
Influence of Education and Family
00:01:46
Speaker
So you're from Lucknow. Tell me about your early influences in Lucknow and people from outside of the metro cities typically don't have great fluency in English. How did you get so fluent?
00:02:02
Speaker
So both my parents are teachers. My dad used to teach electrical engineering. My mother taught history. And therefore, education was always something big in our house. I also went to La Martinia, which was a very good school. So my parents, basically, they were from good schools and backgrounds, but my mother wanted us to go to the best schools. So I went to La Martinia Lucknow, and my sister went to Loreto.
00:02:33
Speaker
And, you know, that was the time when you had a lot of teachers who passionately taught you. Lamarte was not known to be like the, it wasn't the DPS, you know, okay, everybody will get the best grades. But it was known to be a very wholesome education, as in we would have lots of extracurriculars, lots of debates, dramatics, just a minute, quizzes. And I used to be a good student, but I used to also thrive on extracurriculars.
00:03:01
Speaker
So you start enjoying that audience so much. So I often tell people that I was on stage when I was four years old. So I have almost lived. I'm sometimes more comfortable on stage than I am off it.
00:03:16
Speaker
So I think that public exposure, the fact that you and also my parents used to talk to us at home in Hindi, Urdu and English. So we were comfortable with all three languages. I mean, mostly it was Hindi and English.
00:03:32
Speaker
So I think for that reason, there was such a fluency in English. In fact, to the extent that when I used to go and meet some slightly traditional families or relatives, I would say, you know, Mr. N2 Shantu would say, because,
Passion for Reading and Influential Teachers
00:03:52
Speaker
you know, Mr. N2 Shantu would say, because you know, Mr. N2 Shantu would say, because you know, Mr. N2 Shantu would say, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know, because you know
00:04:00
Speaker
But little did they know and I know that this would become something that would be very, very useful for me in the future. And reading was also a huge thing. So I think, you know, in La Martina, they had a beautiful tradition that every time you won a prize in school, you could go and select the book you got as a prize. So, meh universal booksellers jata dha hai, hadra dhyaj mein. And I would just go there and I mean, for me, it was like entering, you know, Aladdin's cave.
00:04:32
Speaker
and I would just find such lovely books. So, I started reading senior books very early. So, I had read all of Ayn Rand in class 9th, I had finished all of Wilbur Smith, I had read Edgar I. Burroughs books because while he is the creator of Tarzan, his books were very, very beautifully written.
00:04:49
Speaker
I had read all of Alistair McLean. I had read all of Agatha Christie. Some of these were my sister's books, but I used to read Agatha Christie. Maybe my sister read more. I read a few of hers. But again, the joy of discovering language, books, words, phrases, and again, the joy of using them. And along with this, I must say that I give a lot of credit to many teachers in school.
00:05:17
Speaker
There was a mamsing when we were very, very small. There was, you know, I remember Mr. Carville, who was a very good fun teacher. I mean, he was a very fun teacher. So he, Mr. Ireland, Mr. Fernandez were all really fun, fun teachers. Then we had this beautiful, wonderful teacher, Mrs. Kapoor, who taught us geography. But I mean, no, there are teachers who make the discovery of a subject a joy. So she was that person.
00:05:44
Speaker
And then right after that, there was another, I mean, I can keep counting so many teachers, Mrs. Savail, Mr. Savail, all these, but the biggest influence was my Vice Principal, Mr. Elton D'Souza, who in class 9th only started grooming me a lot.
00:06:02
Speaker
Okay. So like performing, I believe you had signs as your like the chosen stream. So how did that pivot happen? Again, using a jargon of today's startup world. So as I was telling you that even from middle school or junior school, the same amount of time I used to spend in extracurriculars,
00:06:56
Speaker
So I was actually balancing both of these together and I was good at both.
00:07:01
Speaker
So my teachers used to find that to be very, very good and it never used to interfere in my studies because, you know, I was not this, you know, so it was very, both of these things was
00:07:31
Speaker
I could give equal time to, and because I was getting prizes in both, it was the last 10 years that I was getting prizes in both. And one or two seniors of mine who had gone to Delhi, they started coming and telling me all about, oh my god, this is the stage, this is the contest, this is the prize prize.
00:08:02
Speaker
And that's when I actually had one of my legendary chai conversations with my parents.
Choosing a Creative Path
00:08:07
Speaker
I sat with them and I said, there was a very good boy called Ali Hassan. His father was Dr. Mansoor Hassan who later was the Surgeon General to the President of India.
00:08:23
Speaker
So, very, very good family, very well known. But, you know, whenever I used to go and meet him, his father was always attending to some of the other emergency. So, I will never be around and, you know, I'll always be busy with work.
00:08:52
Speaker
So, I sat with my parents and I told them that I was trying to do a dilly jacket, try it, try it, try it. So, my parents were very honest. They said that I am a teacher. My parents didn't have any means, they didn't have any passbooks or anything like that. So, they said that I was doing a dilly jacket and taking time. You know, they said that I was going to do a countdown.
00:09:17
Speaker
And in that countdown, I have to make it where my father was very clear that, Bita, I will support you to the best of my ability till the time I have this finite money. So, if you have infinite resources or infinite time, then you will naturally be able to do that. But if you have finite resources or finite time, then you will be able to do that.
00:09:44
Speaker
So when I reached Delhi, everything, I was set in my head. I must get the hostel. I must get the college admission. I must take part in the debate. I must win the national debating championship, et cetera. And my principal called me at the end of first year and said, listen, my boy, you are very good at what you do. And I'm a Hindu college at Delhi University.
00:10:14
Speaker
Everything else you don't have to worry about.
00:10:31
Speaker
You know?
00:11:00
Speaker
This was which year when you were doing it? I went to Delhi in 1988.
00:11:07
Speaker
After I finished my 12th in Lucknow, I went to Delhi and I was in Hindu from 88 to 91 and 91 to 93, I was in mass communication.
00:11:19
Speaker
OK, so by the end of Hindu, you were clear. I want to get into a TV or a radio kind of a role. Like that's why you would have chosen. So I must tell you the funny thing was that the one other thing that happened I forgot to mention was that I joined a professional theatre group in college. So college theatre group, there were three, four theatre groups, there was theatre action group, there was yatric and there was stage door.
00:11:49
Speaker
And stage two, the creative director, artistic director, owner was Mr. Aamir Zavusen. And Aamir Jothevo and Sadhar Patil met at the University of Delhi. He was the only one who was able to take a good hour, hour and a half to get to his house.
00:12:17
Speaker
It was huge.
00:12:32
Speaker
There was a lot of theater posters and co-actors like Moriah Sheraton, General Manager and Dusreh, J. Walter Thompson, Creative Director and two students who were already in Mass Rock. So, what was the purpose of the proper mentor? What was the purpose of this project?
00:12:57
Speaker
So Sanjay Ray Chaudhry, I remember, was the person. And Sanjay Ray Chaudhry, if you look up, he was later the person who co-founded TV18.
00:13:14
Speaker
So, Reisi was a senior and Reisi was this Bengali guy who was full of ideas, full of enthusiasm. And that was so exciting that...
00:13:40
Speaker
And again, because my mother pushed me to the college to teach her, next, she said, you know, and I used to tell them, I used to tell them TV, or radio, FM, and I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I used to tell them, I
00:14:09
Speaker
There were some very good shows that had already happened. People like Ramesh Sipi, people like all the Shyam Benegal etc were doing television.
00:14:35
Speaker
We all thought of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought
Radio and Television Breakthrough
00:14:46
Speaker
of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers, or directors, or editors, or writers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all thought of ourselves as producers. We all
00:15:05
Speaker
She and 2-3 other teachers used to always tell me, they said, you know, you remind us of another student just in a complete course. So, why did he come? He said, Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh was from Mascom. In the first year of Mascom, he had done the TV show Fauji.
00:15:27
Speaker
And then he was such a good student that he studied and he topped the first year. Rumour has it that faculty made him sign a document saying that in the second year, he would not be able to attend 100% attendance.
00:15:48
Speaker
So he dropped the course and he left. So he was brilliant. Even today, I can say that one of the most smartest intelligent people that you can come across. So, I don't know if you've seen this, but I think you've seen it already. Or if you've seen this, you've seen ZTV, Star TV, or FM. I mean, it all happened in that year of 91 or 93, but it's not true.
00:16:16
Speaker
The first wave of liberalization. Yeah, and honestly, I often say that my career is just beautifully mirrors these different waves. So the first wave of democratization of media to some degree was the liberalization of the airwaves and private television. So, what do you think about your career?
00:16:46
Speaker
So that's how I got to radio and television. Okay. So how did you like, was it like an interview for getting into?
00:17:16
Speaker
You know, it was about careers. It didn't matter how boring it was. It was about mental impact. It was about school planning and architecture. We are talking about architecture as a career.
00:17:37
Speaker
I think the opening line is the most important part of my life. I think people don't talk like this. People don't talk like this. I mean, I was being paid very decent money, etc. for it, but I just quit and I was like, what? I'm not going to do this.
00:18:03
Speaker
I started looking around and you know one of the other things was that I had actually had one of those, you know overnight, I had married a classmate of mine. From Mascom? From Mascom.
00:18:30
Speaker
I think suddenly, I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why
00:19:03
Speaker
I put on my radio and I tuned into FM and I used to play jazz music per program.
00:19:22
Speaker
And the gentleman who was presenting the show was very, very... He was not talking one-to-one, he was talking down. He was like, you know, in case you haven't heard this, this is the legendary so-and-so.
00:19:40
Speaker
I was like, this is not the way people talk and this is meant to be FM. This is meant to be the voice of today. This is meant to be the voice of yesterday. So, I put 50 rupees in 50 rupees. I put 50 rupees in 50 rupees. I put 50 rupees in 50 rupees. I put 50 rupees in 50 rupees. I put 50 rupees in 50 rupees.
00:20:06
Speaker
And I took the bike and I went to all India radio on Parliament Street. And parking my bike, and I had to choose which one to choose from. So I thought, what is the medium? Many times you enter posturing that, oh my god, I know everything, I'm the cool cat, I'm this, I'm that. But I didn't know that. I silently observe.
00:20:32
Speaker
I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing, I was just observing
00:20:54
Speaker
He was exactly like that. This is my moment.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I turned to him and said, he was so touched by the fact that I offered him a cup of tea that he immediately took the cup and you know that now you have the person captive for 5 to 10 minutes.
00:21:53
Speaker
In the next 10 minutes, he told me all the inside story of FM.
00:22:00
Speaker
And at the end of 10 minutes, he's the one who got me inside without a letter, without an introduction, without anything. A letter is what? Like an interview letter or something?
00:22:22
Speaker
So because of that, I went in and I went straight and met the assistant station director, who turned out to at that time be a visiting professor at Jamia at mass communication. And he obviously had heard of me because I hate the voices on it.
00:22:47
Speaker
I think if I remember was Linda Mukherjee. So Linda, what slot do we have available? So you're Friday. We have a slot available on Sunday morning 10 to 11. So he looked at me, he says, so? I said, sir, I'll do it.
00:23:25
Speaker
And if you know how to use your words and if you know how to put your content and if you're sharp and you think on the spot, you can get everything. I mean, I really feel you can convince, you can pass your dreams and inject them into other people.
00:23:46
Speaker
I actually turned to him and I said, sir, Dasigyara will be a show where I will play ten songs of today and one song of yesterday. Because, aj ki music tu sabko achi lakti hai lakin mere father jugana swanatin hai wasab everlasting songs.
00:24:00
Speaker
He said, okay, go and do the show. He gave you like a weekly slot, like this is yours. He gave me a once a week slot and very beautifully, very sweetly, he put me, there were three levels of artists at that time. There was a 250 rupees artist, a Pancho Rope artist and a 750 rupees artist who was meant to be the top-notch artist. Which was so nice.
00:24:28
Speaker
So I immediately turned and said that, you know, I have to give this show my best shot because I will learn 3,000 rupees extra in 3,000 rupees. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. So I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer to that 10,000 kagoon. I was getting closer
00:24:53
Speaker
So I went to those shops, and I met those people, and I asked them what songs are working, why do people want, what songs are they listening to, interviewed a panwala, because panwali ke hai bhaut kashets milte thai thi series kar zaman hai mein. And I did all of that, and I went home, ek abhil dek thi usbe bed ke chhotre shote edits kare of people's interviews. And on Sunday morning, I went and,
00:25:18
Speaker
I did my first show. And the minute the show got over, there was a peon waiting outside the room. There was a lock on the floor. It was a diligently locked door. The peon was like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Yeah, live telling us. You were recording it in a live show or whatever.
00:25:47
Speaker
I was very thrown in. And for him to be in office on a Sunday, I mean, I still don't remember why he was there, but he called me and he said, Betta, you have something unique and you remind me of someone. So I said, sir, of who?
00:26:13
Speaker
He said, just stay this way. Stay this way because you have something by which you connect with people and I want you to continue with that. So suddenly, he said, FMK head, station director, and the head are doing the endorsement. And now, he said, you know, CD is going to be there.
00:26:37
Speaker
So I started and then I would do these shows and within two months this show became very, very popular and people started talking about it and I got an interview from All India Radio.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I turned to him and said, listen, I can do shows in English as well. He was like shocked. He was like, you know.
00:27:33
Speaker
I think it was a professional assignment. And even then, they were insistent that I become an employee. And I said, no, I am not an employee. I am a freelancer. I mean, you know, this starting the freelance culture. I can say that I played some role in it because people used to, people were job workers. So I said, I don't want to be a freelancer.
00:27:46
Speaker
I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know if it's true or not.
00:27:59
Speaker
Why should I, if I'm, if my job is to present a show, what will I do for the remaining seven hours, sit and look at people's faces? But they didn't realize that radio pay jockey is like a cup of tea.
00:28:27
Speaker
So after a year of doing radio with them, when I did a roadshow to celebrate the first anniversary of Time's FM, I think. Second anniversary, I'm a little unsure. The entire college was on the road to meet us because we were not allowed inside the college.
00:28:54
Speaker
What is going on? And that surge of power, knowing that, my God, You are the voice of these people. I am good at what I do. But I am responsible.
00:29:19
Speaker
So I actually got into that mode and radio popularity in that year that next after that television happened because some of my seniors from mass communication and theater were now with Sanjay Ray Chaudhary who had started his television company. And they wanted one anchor in Delhi and one in some other city who would be on the road talking to people.
00:29:49
Speaker
This was like what kind of show? So it was, it's typically what you call a Vox Pop. So this show was called Public Demand. And it was a film countdown. So between introducing the show, the songs, because Mohan Kapoor was so popular with Saab CD and everything, that Mohan was like the main anchor and we were the throw, just the anchor, just say, cricket on ground.
00:30:14
Speaker
So it was like that. So we were the on-ground anchors who were talking to people and doing interviews. And, you know, it happened very suddenly. I went on the road and the very first time I went on the road because...
00:30:56
Speaker
We would do this and go and meet everybody one by one by one.
00:31:03
Speaker
Doing that, this was what I was doing on the road. So for that reason, I think that show became very popular. Mohan Kapoor in two weeks of me and Mahima Chaudhary, who was at that time, Ritu Chaudhary,
00:31:29
Speaker
both of us doing the show Mohan said listen the show doesn't need me I said I'm coming in the way of these two people they are so good you should just continue with them
00:31:43
Speaker
So, you left radio and moved to TV or like you were doing both together? No, no. You know, I was a slasher by profession. Okay, okay. So, I have a TV and a voiceover for a very dear friend of mine in Delhi. Even today, he is a very big documentary filmmaker.
00:32:08
Speaker
I had got on to that thing, I had said that this is my time and I have to make the most of it. I had got on to that thing, I had said that this is my time and I have to make the most of it. I had got on to that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got onto that thing, I had got
00:32:25
Speaker
You know, it was so exciting.
00:32:47
Speaker
Okay. So you must have been working like 15 hours a day types, like two, three radio shows, TV. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And I promise you even today, everybody who works with me, I mean, says that when I do things that I love, and I only do things that I love mostly, I do them still with a childlike enthusiasm.
00:33:15
Speaker
I am enthusiastic about life and doing these things so much. That's it.
00:33:29
Speaker
I think for that reason, I was doing all of these and enjoying them. But I must tell you that within six months of doing public demand, I was also doing another show and another show. I was doing three TV shows.
00:33:45
Speaker
Wow. And radio also. And voice over radio. And voice over, I think, I would do it very occasionally. And then I started hosting live events because... Remember that Delhi was not Bollywood. So Delhi had very few known faces. Suddenly I became a known face and now I was being asked to anchor every event. What kind of events? Give me an example.
00:34:13
Speaker
So one of the first big events I did was a Maruti Suzuki Gypsy launch with Baba Segal as the performer.
00:34:37
Speaker
When we dance, we have to dance to the stage, we have to organize, we have to do what we do, etc. We have to go to the Russian state. Again, as I keep saying that, you know, we have to engage a lot of people. We have to engage in a game-social stage. We have to have a social stage. We have to have an audience. We have to have a cultural stage.
00:34:59
Speaker
But I kept reading it for 45 minutes and I was peered. In fact, I remember that they were so happy that they paid me twice the money that was owed to me. But I realized that day that hosting is not about grabbing a mic and seeing what is written on a script that is not hosting.
00:35:20
Speaker
Hosting is about engagement. Hosting is about entertaining people. It's about getting into their hearts. It's about creating memories. And all this became things that I now learned. And very soon, I was like, yeah, I'm going to do a theater show. I'm going to do a theater show. And I opened Encompass, which was one of the first event companies out of Delhi.
00:35:46
Speaker
Okay, so like essentially these kind of events you would stage manage them like if a company has to launch a new car or these kind of events you also what you what you basically so we would do a lot of press and PR launches a lot of sales conferences and these were the early days when we were working with brands like singer and Motorola and Opel Astra and believe you me event management are
00:36:20
Speaker
We were just, again, we were young, we were rebellious, we were a little, you know, we were happy to take things on. And this whole thing, everybody told me saying,
00:36:30
Speaker
You are Roshan Abbas, you're so well known, you go in corporate offices and you sit in, you're taking a brief from people.
00:36:58
Speaker
And I was also spending a lot of time with a friend of mine who was running an advertising agency in those days, Sandeep Goel, Redefusion.
00:37:26
Speaker
And from her I was learning how you do professional events and what all you require.
00:37:38
Speaker
And I kept building a team below me. So lots of people who were with me in theater, in television, in radio. And if I saw that they had the ability to do more than one thing, I would tell them, why don't you come and join us in the event management business?
00:37:53
Speaker
So I've seen that, you know, performing artists and people in the creative field are not great at running companies because it's not creative work. It is operations and processes and, you know, stuff like that. Did you like struggle to make that migration or? So so I think I think initially I did struggle because I hated looking at a balance sheet. I hated
00:38:21
Speaker
having to say what time should people come to work and what time should they go, etc. But honestly, I give a lot of credit to Su Fertal, who at that time, because she had come from an agency set up, she came to us with a lot of processes. And, you know, she put everything down saying, okay, a person...
Founding Encompass: A Creative Venture
00:38:45
Speaker
But I was like, there was no system. So she bought in a lot of processes and systems. In fact, after a year, we realized that our original set of people was so maybe pressured by so many processes and systems that many of them moved on.
00:39:08
Speaker
But I was then able to say that in any creative company, there needs to be a balance between spirit and systems. There needs to be processes and passion.
00:39:21
Speaker
There needs to be finance and fun. So this is where I would lay down the architecture and then I would get people to come in and do things. So I got so many people. I had a very good junior of mine called Sukrit Singh, who I quickly made the creative director and then I made him into the CEO of the company after some time. I had a friend on radio called Ramokarji. She came in as the creative director. I had a friend who was a filmmaker called Ranjit Rayana. He came into head audio visual.
00:39:51
Speaker
So various people just kept, and some of the people used to do production and television came and joined us as production heads. So we were cobbling together something which didn't exist. So it was still a very creative process. Setting up creative agencies was still creative. But the things that I didn't like, I would quickly find somebody else to do them who enjoyed doing them. So Sue loved processes. She loved putting systems in place. And she did that.
00:40:19
Speaker
And how, like, you know, how big did it grow or like what was the turnover when you started and how did that, you know, if you can share some idea of that. The first show that we did, which was a big show under Encompass was a show that was worth 14 lakhs, which at that time was unheard of. This was like 99, 2000. This is, this is 90. Actually, this is about 97.
00:40:49
Speaker
And we then very quickly grew before, by 99 we had become, if I remember correctly, we were an eight crore company. And it was meteoric. Unbelievable. People were like, no external funding. This is all like nothing.
00:41:10
Speaker
And we were also the kind of people, Akshay, who would do everything. So we said, we create content for various mediums. We were doing films for our clients, we were doing plays for our clients, we were doing events for them, we were doing concerts for them. And everybody else would turn and say
00:41:31
Speaker
And they would then start going and looking for those people because of my immersion in the arts, because I was from radio and television and theater and entertainment. All the resources were on my fingertips. Even today, sometimes when I migrate my phone directory and it is migrating 18 to 20,000 contacts, people are like, are you mad? You have 20,000 contacts? I said, yes, I do. Yeah.
00:41:55
Speaker
So that is what happened and it just exploded and then I came to Bombay and in fact I didn't do radio for many years but I continued doing television and I set up the Bombay office of Encompass and
00:42:12
Speaker
another friend of ours set up a Bangalore office for Encompass and we just kept growing. I mean, our history as Encompass for anybody in the event business is an incredible journey. So like when WPP acquired you, what kind of top line or revenue were you at?
00:42:36
Speaker
I think we were roughly in the just around 50 odd crores as a top line, if I'm not mistaken. Wow. Okay. And which year was this, like when WPP acquired? 2008.
00:42:52
Speaker
Okay. So once you move to Bombay, then about seven, eight years more, you ran it before the acquisition. And again, I must tell you that I will give full credit to my team. I had wonderful people with me. There was Ranjit and there was Ranjit had gone back to the US because he wanted to study in the US for a while. So Sukrit ran the business. Frankly, the day-to-day CEO was Sukrit.
00:43:15
Speaker
under him, we had a lovely team, we had Navneet Mohan who was taking care of Bombay, we had Sham Rajagopalan, we had multiple, multiple people, Priya Khosla, I mean, I have to give credit to them because my job now was to play Rainmaker. Everybody knew that I had now with three TV shows, I had two fan mail, I had family fortunes and I had public demand.
00:43:38
Speaker
And occasionally, I would dabble into one or two other shows. I would go and do some other show somewhere, some other show somewhere. And I would do maybe a short stint on a quiz show on Doordarshan or something, because the monies had actually become even bigger. So I was constantly still chasing. And that number from 20 had added another zero to it, and then I did some more to it. So it was just becoming, frankly, running television. If you do three television shows, you don't have time for anything else.
00:44:06
Speaker
So, I was only playing Rainmaker and I love cracking ideas. So, I would go to all the big brands and say, here is your big idea. And then I walked out of the room in my team. What do you mean by playing Rainmaker? Sorry, if you can help me understand. So, see, essentially what happens is that for a field to be fertile, right? So, what typically people talk of saying, oh my God,
00:44:32
Speaker
People can maybe do small things and but you need a rain to get a field full of you know Of produce so so rain makers are basically people who will bring big opportunities to businesses So I started putting the rain maker like I would go and not get you the 5 lakh 10 lakh event I would go and get the 50 lakh event. I would get the one crore event. I would get the annual contract, you know That was my role
00:44:58
Speaker
So, why did you decide to like you know let it get acquired?
00:45:07
Speaker
So again, you know what had happened was that 2005 to 2007, events is a very tiring business and I could see that the pressure was, we were excited, but the pressure was now telling on both Sukrit, occasionally on me, every now and then we would have conversations saying, and whenever we would go to a client,
00:45:30
Speaker
Sitting in the room would be the advertising agency, so events are considered largely to be short-term brand building exercises, while advertising is doing long-term brand building.
00:45:45
Speaker
So the client always would pay more attention to the advertising agency. And I used to often turn and say that, you know, I mean, and I used to make a very, very bad analogy, but I used to turn and say that, you know, advertising agency or client, they are like, as if they are married to each other. And we are like a very exciting one night stand.
00:46:05
Speaker
And when I used to say it, people used to laugh. So one day, Colvin Harris, who was the head of JWT, and by this time we started thinking of saying, if we were to sell to someone, if he became part of an advertising group, we would get legitimacy. We would get heritage. We would learn how to do things at the next level. We would be integrated into annual brand plans rather than come and be the sprinkling on top of the cherry on top of the cake.
00:46:32
Speaker
So how do we become integrated? So this whole thing about integrated communication, the whole thing about through the line communication, these kind of things were things we were talking about. And we were always very thirsty to learn. So we would constantly read new books and find new things. And all of this started intriguing us. So we were now open to the idea of a merger or acquisition. And Colvin Harris, who was the head of JWT and still a good friend,
00:46:57
Speaker
he turned that time and said, listen, I mean, you know, you keep saying this or whatever, why don't, why don't you actually, why don't we put the ring on the finger of encompass kind, you know.
00:47:06
Speaker
And we had about, I think, a year of negotiations and discussions. And we had extremely clean finances. So very often, event companies come under a cloud because, you know, we were never like that. We were very proper. We were very above board.
00:47:28
Speaker
And they loved that because when I think Ernst & Young or one of them was doing our due diligence and they were like very happy to see that our paperwork was rock solid. And that's what makes the basis of a good acquisition. A great idea is one part of it, but a great team, a great background check is equally important. And we got all of that. So in the meantime, you also moved on from television, right? Like when did you hang up your boots on the TV front?
00:47:57
Speaker
2008 is when I did my last TV show. So, I was doing Genai Sikanam Hai and I wanted to get into making films. I was very, very keen. I used to still love anchoring live events. So, in 2008, I remember I was doing Genai Sikanam Hai and somewhere that season of Genai Sikanam Hai was... For me, I was paying a tribute to Farooq Sheikh because I was so, so fond of him, such a big fan.
00:48:22
Speaker
that when I got offered the show, I said, no, this will be like the silver lining to my TV career. I've done like 20 television shows, and this will be the best one of the lot. But all the film actors had already been done by NDTV. All the well-known personalities, whether they were of any other nature, had already been done. And since Z was doing this with a new team, et cetera, suddenly the thought changed. And they said, we will bring well-known TV personalities, but largely from the ZTV stable.
00:48:53
Speaker
So there was no problem with that. They were all very successful people. I think I interviewed everyone from Supriya Pathak and Pankaj Kapoorji to Mandir Abedi. And my last episode was Raki Savant. And I mean, see, Raki is a performer who performs for the audience. And therefore, when she came to the show, she had told her entire family, because I think they must have watched all of G.N.I.C. Kannamhe before and said, everybody has to come in crying.
00:49:23
Speaker
And it was so funny, I thought I was watching a parody of the show because every, see, she's a, again, there are some people who are very smart. I do not want to comment on anything else of their lives, but they are smart, smart television presenters and individuals who know that they are meant to be entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. And some of them become presidents also.
00:49:46
Speaker
They become everything in the world. So the thing was that I really felt that when I was watching that show, I thought I'm watching a parody of my own show and I said, you know, this is it. I think, you know, if I ever want to do TV again, I actually just felt it.
From Television to Filmmaking
00:50:07
Speaker
7 sehruvat karithi, technically, 9697. So they are bees. I've almost done a good 10 years, sorry, so 96 to 2008, 12 years. And I said, yeah, this is enough. There was a very big host I used to follow called Phil Donahue. And Phil Donahue was the male equivalent of Oprah Winfrey in the early days. And he had said just one thing. He said, if you're great on television,
00:50:33
Speaker
You will have, I don't remember the exact quote, but I think you should say that if you're great on television, you'll have five years. If you're brilliant, you'll have 10. And if you're God, you can have 20. So I said, yeah, between brilliant and whatever. So I moved on. And I actually wanted to start making films. So that was almost like my next leap that happened in 2008.
00:50:58
Speaker
So I was still a live event host, and I would travel and do these shows. And I had started doing some shows with Shahrukh, because Pepsi, Shahrukh was a brand ambassador. And two or three times in the annual conference, I used to host him. And we would do these really fun conversations. And I genuinely think he's one of the wittier, smartest people. And he used to enjoy the conversation, because every time I would ask him new things.
00:51:28
Speaker
So somewhere by default, in that period of time, I became his host. And wherever he would travel, he was also ICICI's brand master. So they would do these shows. So once I flew to London to do a show with him, once I went to Singapore to do a show with him, once I went to Dubai to do a show with him.
00:51:52
Speaker
Now, at this time, I had also looked back and said, OK, I did radio, I did theater. And when I was doing theater in Delhi, one thing which I didn't tell you was that I, every summer, used to hold workshops. And in those workshops, I used to train people in acting and public speaking, etc. I used to pass it on to them. In one of those classes, the kids had asked me, saying, why don't you ever teach us how to write a play?
00:52:19
Speaker
They were like, why don't we try? So I said, okay, we'll do two, three exercises. And these kids came and the first time they came back, they had written plays about Jack and John. And I looked at those plays and I said, what is this? So they were all looking and saying, what is this? I said, you know, guys, stop being stupid. Write about yourselves.
00:52:44
Speaker
And, you know, the kids had this sudden look saying, really? And I said, yeah, because this play, if it is ever going to be a play, will be about you. And Akshay, the next day, you know, next week, these kids came with stories that I still remember. And they had, I mean, I was laughing and crying and crying, like I'm really crying because there was a girl I remember who said that my mother wants me to be Miss India. And she says, I can't play sports because
00:53:14
Speaker
Because my daughter can't look ugly if she is in a bikini. There was a boy who said that, you know, my father, my grandfather, they all have won so many medals and whatever that, however, when I do in school, it's never good enough. There was another kid who was the son of a big police commissioner and he said that, you know, I mean, my father doesn't...
00:53:41
Speaker
He comes home and he's still police commissioner. So I was hearing these beautiful lines reading them and I got very inspired and I went that night and I started writing a play called Graffiti. And Graffiti postcards from Skoolooska by Leinthe.
00:53:59
Speaker
It was all of these experience woven into a story while I was writing the story. I started doing the music with two of my friends and between 97 and 99, we put up Delhi's biggest musical called graffiti and it had people who you all now know. At that time, they were 17 and 19 years old. Here are some names that you might know. Samir Kocher, Neha Dhupia,
00:54:24
Speaker
Priyanka Bose, Gaurav Kapoor, Ritu Parant Thakur. So all of these people went on to become television stars, etc. and film stars later. But at that time, there were students working with me on this play and it was phenomenal. It was, Shyamag Dabar came and did choreography, and he said, I have a desire to make this music. Someday, I will make this music into a film.
00:54:53
Speaker
So when I was hosting this show with Shah Rukh in Dubai, I was sitting backstage and we had time. Normally, I would chat. So he came in and he said, what's your film? So I said, what's your film? My name is Shah Rukh and I film like this. He had this smile or whatever. So what's it about? So I said, yeah, it's a film that doesn't need a superstar like you.
00:55:22
Speaker
So you know like he got suddenly said, what do you mean? So I said, yeah, it's about it's about four kids passing out from school. It's very young guys and you know, and Shahrukh is very aware. He said, this is the play you've done in Delhi. He said, yeah, he's a subscript radio.
00:55:37
Speaker
Imagine you've got such a big thing, so I had a rough draft and when I came back to Bombay from Dubai, I had a call with his management team and they heard the story and in 2009, I was suddenly commissioned to write the film and whenever the film was written and approved, we would make the film into a film.
00:55:59
Speaker
So, I actually took two years off from my day job at Encompass and I told my partner, Rayon, I said, boss, if you're a Bollywood filmmaker, I'll give you a chance. So, all of 2009, I worked on The Scrape, 2010, we shot the film.
00:56:16
Speaker
2011 it released. So normally a film doesn't take this much time but what happened was that Shahrukh was busy with Ravan at that time. I was making this really small film and I would get to meet him like once every two months for a long time, four hours, five hours but you know in those two months that one meeting...
00:56:41
Speaker
And what we typically call, I went through developmental help, which is that everybody has a suggestion about how a film should be made.
00:56:52
Speaker
People would tell me, my cinematographer, they were all, of course, very nice guys. But my producers would tell me, my executive producer would tell me, my assistant director would have an idea, somebody would have an idea. And then we would meet Shah Rukh and he would have his ideas. And the unfortunate part is that while some people run a very democratic set, some people run a very, very dictator-like set. But I have actually come to realize that a film can't be made with 20 people's visions.
00:57:21
Speaker
So at some point, at some point in 2010, I believe that I started moving from my role as the director, writer, creator to the client servicing director. Okay, you were just doing stakeholder. I lost objectivity.
00:57:42
Speaker
And frankly, that's the one thing. So we still made a nice film. It released. It did decently. It recovered its money. You will see it very often on ZTV and Star TV. But those three years was a huge learning. Many ups and downs. But I mean, time that I will always cherish because I got to make a Bollywood film.
00:58:12
Speaker
We were out of budget. And you know, the executive producer's job is finally to tell you that boss. So, you know, I didn't I had a film that had everything except a title sequence.
00:58:26
Speaker
Why do we get a title sequence? And lo and behold, I remembered that I had gone to Encompass. In between, I used to keep going in and doing like, you know, one day, two days of work like that.
Mentorship and Investment in Startups
00:58:38
Speaker
I said, I had gone to do this work at Encompass and I'd seen some very beautiful design work that had been outsourced by us to an agency. So I told the girl, I said, who did that work? She said, there were these two really mad, crazy boys and they run something called The Glitch.
00:58:55
Speaker
I said, please call them. So these two boys came and I met them and I, and I used to love their work and suddenly realized that I had met them and they were students at symbiosis and I had chatted with them then also. And one of them had actually even come and worked at our company for exactly one week. Uh, but at that point in time, I was not, I was traveling and he had felt that we were, we were trying to do corporate work. So one of them had joined channel B, one of them joined MTV and then they had both quit channel B and MTV during the
00:59:23
Speaker
Meltdown Jowata 2008-2009 and they had started their own agency but they were doing some really beautiful work and I called them and I said guys I have a proposition for you I somehow feel that you all can make a great title sequence for my film I have no money to offer you but I will pay you over a year
00:59:45
Speaker
So if the cost of the title sequence should be 5 lakh rupees, I'll pay you that money over a year, or I can pay you in advice and free beers and biryani and everything else. Because I know how to build a business. And they were like, you know, we'll take the letter. And I remember them sitting opposite and saying that, you know, biryani also be in the credits. I said, yes, this is up to the group.
01:00:10
Speaker
So they made the credits of the film and Varun and Rohit were the two boys when they then started coming and meeting me about their business. And I used to keep giving them my ideas, my reasons, the ups, the downs of Encompass, what was good, what was bad.
01:00:29
Speaker
They actually took a lot of my advice and started working with me. I invested. So after about, I think after three months, they said, I think we've taken enough of your, they said we've taken enough of your time and your advice and everything. Would you like to be a partner?
01:00:49
Speaker
And I said, if it means spending time with you all, I'd love it. And I actually invested in their agency. I gave them a little bit of a credit line. And then Clitch, which at that point was a small team working out of a garage at the back of Yari Road, went on from there to keep growing, keep growing. And then during a period of time, we took on a big
01:01:16
Speaker
We took on a CEO in the company Puja Duggirala and she was Puja Johari actually. So Puja Johari joined us and Puja became the CEO of the company in no time. She was also dating Varun at that time, who was one of the partners.
01:01:35
Speaker
But so I had to navigate that whole discussion, et cetera, et cetera. But she was so good at her work. And she came in as a strategy director. Then we made her head of client servicing. And then within a year, she was our CEO. And that agency continued to grow. And in the initial days, when I used to recommend them to clients and other people, everybody thought, what is your digital media? I mean, in 2009, what is your digital media?
01:02:00
Speaker
And I used to keep saying no. They were basically like a digital marketing issue. Yeah, but they were not like, you know, they were not about. Remember, those were not that day. That was the time when everybody who thought the digital marketing is Facebook, how many subscribers on a page? But they were not into that. They were doing a beautiful thing where a diesel store, you know, you could shoot a gun at a target by tweeting.
01:02:24
Speaker
the name of the brand. So they were coming up with such innovations. I remember they had crowd sourced a playlist which a guy in a retail store was performing, but he would only sing the song. They would create videos where you could insert your picture and suddenly you would be in the middle of the video. So they were making these brilliant
01:02:45
Speaker
you know, transmedia content ideas, and just growing, growing, and they were growing the same way and Compass had grown. Like, you know, I mean, suddenly from 1 crore to 3 to 10 to 12, like, I mean, it just kept growing. And this is the agency that I sold in, I mean, I didn't just sell WBP acquired in 2018.
01:03:07
Speaker
And it is a jewel in the crown. It's considered amongst India's top creative agencies because we now do all the work. So we do work for Netflix. We do work for Diageo. We do work for Unilever. But the business is run by Pooja, Rohit and Varun and their entire teams. And there are some 200, 300 people there. When I go to that office, I feel that most of them are young enough to be my children.
01:03:31
Speaker
But they are so smart, so unafraid, brilliant people. So this actually, very often people look on it and say that, how did you find this? And I said, yeah, I didn't do any of that. I found people I loved, and I loved their ideas, and I loved their thought, and I loved their culture.
01:03:54
Speaker
And many people, when they invest, think about how much money and whatever. And I keep saying, they call valuation, they call it values. Because from where I come, if you don't have values, if I need to be comfortable sitting with you without a business agenda, then I'm happy. Because if it's only a business agenda that drives the association, I'm not interested.
01:04:18
Speaker
You know, sometimes I'm over trusting. Sometimes I get over invested in terms of relationships and time, but I like doing that.
01:04:27
Speaker
And it always gives me very rich dividend. So this is what happened post 2008 all the way and Compass kept growing. In 2015, Compass partnered with, and so we were a JWT affiliated agency and Ogilvy had an agency called Geometry and we did the unthinkable because in 2015, we got Geometry and Encompassed together and it became Geometry Encompassed because we felt that our clients needed more solutions.
01:04:56
Speaker
And the two solutions that geometry had, which were brilliant, was shopper marketing and rural activation. They were also strong strategically. We were very good with events. We were very good with activation. We were very good with content creation. So we bought both of these entities together. And that's what created geometry and Compass that in 2015 became, with the combined P&Ls of these two agencies, the largest agency in India.
01:05:22
Speaker
Well, I think you are like the most hidden serial entrepreneur in the startup ecosystem. I'm sure a lot of people would not realize that. Yeah, I mean, I keep quiet about it also, but I must tell you then we have an investment in a small influencer marketing company called Chatterbox. We have about 15 micro investments that I do with a whole bunch of other investors, which is part of a Super Angel fund called Global Super Angels Forum.
01:05:52
Speaker
We, in fact, just closed five new companies. But these are those really micro friends and family around.
01:06:01
Speaker
So it's not too much money, but it's it's a lot more I call it smart money because you know a check of 10 lags from us frankly its value because of the connections and experience we bring is worth a crore and I often tell people that saying listen you can get dumb money or you can get smart money and smart money and hard-working money is money that works for you because we will we will spend time with the founders we will connect them to other people we will make sure that they get to a series a
01:06:25
Speaker
you know so those are the kind of thing we do and it's the most brilliant way of keeping your mind young because people come with crazy ideas and sometimes the group may not invest in them like we had an organic farming solution that somebody came which was better than hydroponic farming.
01:06:43
Speaker
And about four of us out of the 20 people who invest loved the idea, and we went and invested money on the site. So it's just that, that you come across brilliant ideas, from SaaS companies to FinTech companies to EduTech companies, because these are the themes right now which are doing well. But it's fabulous, because I spend a lot of time with these startups, and I learn. I mean, I have some experience to give them, but mostly I'm learning.
01:07:12
Speaker
So how does one pitch to you if someone who's listening to the show wants to impress you? What are the things that you would look for? So I'll tell you. I tell people that don't do this high hello business on LinkedIn because they are bar time wasting. Number one, make sure that your profile on any of your social media is
01:07:36
Speaker
attractive and exciting. I don't want to know that you're a TEDx speaker. I hate that because I find that it's such a license anybody can buy. So what's the point? But tell me that you have done something different. Tell me that the recommendations you have, the people you worked with, just your bio, how it reads. That's my first point of interest. Good writing because I'm a man of words. Good writing impresses me.
01:08:06
Speaker
The second thing after that is, come to me and tell me, and this Rajesh, who's the head of GSF has taught me, that what's the problem you're solving? How big is the problem you're solving? Why are you the right person to solve it? Do you have the right team or the right IP or the right P&L or business or whatever for it? And then tell me, why do you want me to be a part of it?
01:08:28
Speaker
because you know people and don't come and sell me an exit. I mean, I'm not the guy who's looking for an exit. I am first say, I mean sometimes you have to enter you in the exit.
01:08:38
Speaker
Like, whether this is such a, oh, you know, in four years we'll make it. No. Do you want to build something? Are you proud of what you're building? These are the things that actually excite me. Money doesn't drive me. So if you come to me saying that you will make so much doesn't excite me. You tell me that you're going to do something that the world will sit up and take notice. Yes.
01:08:59
Speaker
You tell me you're going to make impact. Yes. You bring a certain energy to the relationship and to the table. That's enough. Yeah. Okay. So tell me something like you've been so intimately connected with Bollywood. Why didn't you immerse yourself in the Bollywood life? Like you've been intimately connected and yet not a part of it. No. So very good question.
01:09:26
Speaker
No, you're right. So see what happened was that 2011 when I came out from the film, I had been used to tremendous success in everything I had done. And again, it's very good to say that the film did lose money for everyone. But I mean, it's not that the film was in the top five films of the year, which
01:09:42
Speaker
which somewhere I'm a little overcritical. I like to overperform. So I took it badly. I took it badly. And I knew that I hadn't, as I told you, rather than be the director, I became the client servicing director. And that bothered me because I said, OK, I will make films. I will make content. I will support great ideas. But maybe I need to wait for a bit till either I know this business well
01:10:19
Speaker
People enter, I'm telling you one thing, I've realised this, people enter the cinema hall to lose themselves for those two and a half hours. And if you look at the number of bad comedies, etc., that do really well, they do well because people are saying, and again, I'm not talking about the quality of content. I mean, I love a Razi and I will love many other films as well, which will have a heart and whatever, but
01:10:33
Speaker
Because I'll tell you one thing, superstars can sell you anything.
01:10:48
Speaker
Superstars, when you go in, even in the West, if you go and see it, people go to see a Marvel movie, not for that one moment of brilliant acting. They go to see it for the one punch that kills 3,000 people and the special this and that. So, TK.
01:11:06
Speaker
suspension of belief to some degree, selling you a fantasy, making you believe the world can change. Those are great things. I believe the mobile screen is the intimate screen. That's where you see things. And for that screen, OTT has been the biggest boon. So now that I see good shows on OTT and many people, Ali Fazal by the way, his first film was my film.
01:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, and he was a brilliant actor then, and I said it then, because I said, this boy, I'm trying to make him do these Bollywood things of dance and do this and run around trees. But he is an intense actor, and everybody else in the cast and all the people who were there. So I have kept an arm's length distance, but I have not stayed away.
01:12:03
Speaker
These are all people I know well. I won't say that I spend all my time with them or whatever, but they are around, they are friends, they are available. And I now really feel that this year or the year after this, again, I'm definitely going to go back because I now have some
01:12:24
Speaker
ideas that I believe in, some shows that I believe in. And this time, I'm not changing a word. So I'm like, you know, that you'll go there and say, sir, what can I do right? So now that I've understood, I will do it. And I've also, through Twitter, through Instagram, through everything else that we've done, discovered great people, great collaborators like
01:12:52
Speaker
Tess Joseph, who's now a part of Commune and one of India's most brilliant casting directors. She just cast White Tiger, and before that she done Lion and many other films. Now, with her whenever I have conversations on casting and acting, they are such rich conversations. Or if I ever sit with my friend, Angkur Tiwari, and discuss films and screenplays and whatever, it's such a beautiful conversation. So I now believe that I have, or yeah, Kossar Munir. Kossar is such a good friend of mine.
01:13:22
Speaker
You know, she's written dialogues and songs and everything. What is commune? Tell us about that. So commune is my savior. So when I came out of the film, as I told you, I was very low. I was very depressed. I was like,
01:13:52
Speaker
So for a year or two, I was very, very upset. And my friends used to keep coming and telling me, don't worry, it's a failure problem. And to come to terms with failure requires you to number one, and I keep saying this to everyone, our country, like most countries,
01:14:17
Speaker
So in that year, all of these great creators and friends, they all came to me and said, listen, it's fine. And they told me about their careers and failures they'd had. And then they would say, listen, why don't we go and watch a play? Let's go into this place and listen to some music.
01:14:42
Speaker
I had emptied myself creatively in everything I had done. So it was time to take a refill.
01:14:52
Speaker
So in taking that refill, in finding this network of creators who told me great things and from whom I learned great things, I suddenly started thinking that, do creators have this kind of a network?
Creating Commune: A Storytelling Platform
01:15:05
Speaker
Is there any place where you can create, collaborate, consume, discuss your problems, discuss solutions, all of that as artists? So actually, when it started in my head, Commune was going to become like an incubator of creative ideas.
01:15:23
Speaker
But when I started meeting people, I realized that most creators in India were in the hobby stage. This is my side. This is my main company. OML had just started building comedy. They were very keen to build theater also. They were building EDM and music and they had NH7.
01:15:45
Speaker
Commune suddenly, I went out to a whole bunch of people and said, if you had some money, what's the creative idea you would do? And one of the ideas that I suggested in the meeting was, how about just letting people come and tell their stories? And in that telling of stories,
01:16:03
Speaker
There was an authenticity and an intimacy and an identification that young people and frankly, everyone started doing with the stories we were telling. So in year one, 2015, we were like the house of stories and we were just telling wonderful, real stories which made people laugh and cry and feel.
01:16:23
Speaker
But this was like a live event? Yeah, so we would do live events, but the beauty was that Gaurav Kapoor, who's also one of the partners and founders of Commune, he told me, because you are live event people, I'm a stadium guy, I'm a television guy, record and put them up on social media.
01:16:43
Speaker
And the minute we started putting them up on social media, we started getting fabulous response. We started with 100 people, 200 people. So we realized that we have actually figured out something which is unique. And within two years, we said, we want to do a festival. And everybody was like, why do you want to do a festival? And I was like, listen.
01:17:10
Speaker
For everybody in this community needs to feel that, what is the holy grail? What is the place that you say, boss, this is the Edinburgh of spoken word. Exactly. Exactly. You know, Y Combinator demo days.
01:17:34
Speaker
The creative world is what we do. We started in 2017, we did our first festival called Spoken. And Spoken became like just like it just blew up.
01:17:55
Speaker
First year we had like some 7,000 people, second year we had 10,000 people, last year we had, because we finished it in Jan, we had 14,000 people and these are 14,000 wonderful people. Frankly, our festival is the kind where we keep saying this is a lean in festival. It's a lean in experience, right? It doesn't require you to sit back and close your eyes and say, or you want to be a part of everything there.
01:18:20
Speaker
So very warm, very mindful, you know, content, whether it is stories or poems or singer songwriters or people who are, you know, really just people who use the spoken word in any sense. So festival Bhanadia, festival Bante Bante Abh, Peridhon log do logte or teen logte and every year a team used to come together as freelancers.
01:18:47
Speaker
A year before last, I actually recruited some people and I shared the mission of saying that, listen, we really want to help creators be the best they can be. So how can we do it? We can do it by supporting their art, showing them how to be better at their art, showing them how to find an audience, finding brands to invest in it. So I think I bought all the learning that I had from all the real experiential learning I had from Encompass.
01:19:15
Speaker
all the digital marketing, et cetera, learning that I had from Glitch, a little bit of all my experiences of radio, theater, et cetera, all of those, a little bit of my GSF investment hat. In Sari Chino Kujodke, Commune has almost become this platform to promote and create great art and artists. And that's what we are doing. And today, we are doing everything from podcasts to online, offline experiences to creative learning. It's beautiful.
01:19:43
Speaker
So in a way, it's like a Ted for India, right? Like a made in India version of Ted. So you see, again, what happens with Ted very often, there is a need to say something that is, was very earth-shattering, very, you know, my God, do you apologize? There is occasionally something that will deeply touch you. And, you know, if Amanda Gorman can be performing at Joe Biden's inauguration, then
01:20:13
Speaker
The world is changing. The winner of America's Got Talent this year was a poet. Coca-Cola's new campaign is done by a performance poet again. There was a guy called Tom Foolery who's become so famous on Instagram because he's a great videographer who tells great stories. And all these people are killing it. I mean, I'm not saying that they're just started. They're doing really, really well. Zakir Khan is a storyteller. I've never seen a storyteller like that before. I've never seen one like that before.
01:20:42
Speaker
But he's a storyteller. Nilesh Mishra is a storyteller. And all these mediums today, whether it is poetry, whether it is spoken word, whether it is comedy, which is anecdotal comedy, or whether it is singer-songwriters, are all giving you intimacy at scale. Intimate experiences, if you look at scale,
01:21:09
Speaker
And that's what we are. Amazing. OK. So any last thoughts that you want to leave our listeners with? Any piece of advice? And most of our audience is young. So OK.
Advice for Young Creators
01:21:26
Speaker
Have ideas, but then have implementation, because ideas without implementation are, I don't know that I can use a word that might be very strong.
01:21:38
Speaker
Maybe, please go ahead. The second thing is that you have been blessed as a generation with the tools of creation. I mean, you have searched, we had to go to a library and find a book.
01:22:00
Speaker
You have tools which are available to you. If you have a camera, if you have a camera, if you have a camera, if you have a camera, you can shoot it. This is what I call a Zimedari. And I have nothing against you guys being young and, you know, and impetuous and doing what comes to your mind. You know, you have to have a record button, which is available to you. If you don't have a broadcast button, you have to have a record button.
01:22:30
Speaker
That review, the process of review, the process of... And I say do this three times.
01:22:52
Speaker
So you must know that and do not think that your first words are your best creation. I cannot tell you the power.
01:23:13
Speaker
Learn this process of review, learn this process of collaboration. It makes a huge difference. The third thing is that do not, and again, I'm saying, don't constantly chase success.
01:23:29
Speaker
Chase experiences. Chase a wealth of learning. You know, don't get caught up in these billion dollar stories that you hear every day. What favorite quote here which says, don't confuse your net worth with your self worth. So that was the incredible journey of Roshan Abbas, who is still as excited to create things as he was at the age of 20.
01:23:54
Speaker
Check out the YouTube channel of Roshan's most recent venture Commune for some very interesting spoken word performances. Just search on YouTube for KOMMUNE.
01:24:10
Speaker
If you like the Founder Thesis Podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit the Bodham.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N dot I-N for a complete list of all our shows.