Young creative entrepreneurs from across India made Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida their address for three days last month (March 14-16) to discuss business ideas at TC/1, a creative exercise that brought them face to face with investors and industry leaders. This meet (with 33 speakers, 25 workshops and 400-plus attendees) kicked off The Coalition, a programme to support creative entrepreneurs. And guess who organised it? Only Much Louder, the driving force behind the popular music festival NH7, and Delhi-based consultancy Do One Thing. Here’s looking at four ideas from our city.

RAHUL CHAKRABORTY

Age: 25

Business idea: Chillum INK

Besides music and art, he is an adventure junkie, a photographer who loves to travel. “When I’m not painting the city crazy, you’ll probably find me strumming my guitar, playing with my dogs or riding my bike to explore new places,” says Rahul, who graduated (in animation) from St. Xavier’s College in 2012 and is from Baruipur.

What is your business idea? The idea came very randomly. I always loved art. I remember being pretty broke and I wanted to start something which would help me sustain everyday expenses. I started Chillum INK a year ago, with hardly Rs 100 as capital. What came to my rescue was the humble clay chillum. I did not have any capital to invest. I realised if I could hand-paint the chillums with very “in” themes, such as superheroes and popular bands, they might sell. That’s how Chillum INK started. Next we expanded to customising T-shirts, shoes, bags and before we knew it we’d moved on to bigger projects like wall art, riding accessories like helmets and other cool merchandise. Now, we customise anything and everything!

Today, Chillum INK is a well-known name in the city’s youth circuit and boasts of a strong client base. What worked to my advantage was the freshness of the idea. I would like to take Chillum INK to a national level and maybe someday make it an international brand. Art knows no barriers. In the next few years, I’d like to start a chain of studios all over the country, keeping hand-painted products as the focus.

What’s the customer profile?

Most of our customers are high school kids or college students. Our ‘cool quotient’ helps. So does the fact that our products are very reasonably priced to suit a college student’s pocket. We never make two copies of the same design. We’ve had quite a few older clients too. It’s awesome when a 40-something places an order for a pair of painted Converse (shoes) or a Coldplay T-shirt!

How connected is the business to music or film festivals?

We started the Summer Jam series as a part of Chillum INK last year. Summer Jam is basically a jam session that takes place once every three months and it encourages different musicians to come together and inspire each other. It usually results in insane music. We’ve also discovered immense talent this way.

Another project Chillum INK initiated was the Playing for Change Day, something which has never happened in Calcutta before. I’m in the middle of shooting a video for Playing for Change right now. Also, work is in progress for Chillum INK’s first animation short film. We try to reach out to as many different art forms as we can, be it music, theatre or films.

 

Devika Arora

Age: 25

Business idea: Char So Bees (also 420)

She runs Char So Bees (presently on a break), the city’s biggest rooftop flea market that focuses on promoting local retail and the performing arts. She’s also working on a project called The Catalyst that will pair people together on the basis of a passion or life’s mission. She has been a part of the Inside Out Project (involves art and photography) at TED.com.

What is your business idea?

A string of rooftop events, each a medley of big stars and small somethings. Held every two months, each event is artistically curated, with a different theme or motive running through. Our voice is very Kalaghoda meets NH7, a space where anything is possible, at a low rate, with great food, music and art. We are different because every event in itself is art.

What’s the motivation behind Char So Bees?

The driving motivation is to give a voice not to the voiceless, but to the voiceful. As a photographer, I personally felt the aches that a young artiste goes through to try and establish your own position in the world. Where do you start? How do you start? Hence, 420 seemed like a good strange brew, a watering hole per se, for all things creative from any background. To put someone on stage and let them feel that space, is a very liberating and empowering experience. That feeling is a seed for something far bigger –– ambition, the fire inside and soul power!

What are some of the high points?

Out of the 100-plus acts that have performed on 420’s stage, 80 have been brand new. Among these acts are designer Sneha Arora, who now showcases her work at Lakme Fashion week, Feyago, the rapper.... 420 goes beyond just business. Because of the loyal fan base and warmth you feel at an event, it’s not shocking that many love stories have begun on our rooftop!

How can you scale up Char So Bees?

Char So Bees needs to be local, nationally. Someone once told me about the golden quadrilateral –– a highway network connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai, touching cities such as Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kanpur on the way... that’s where I see 420 heading. An even better scale up would be to document the journey, turn 420 into a video and audio treat to showcase internationally... hiring a van, driving from event to event, covering each NH along the way.... thereby making it a cultural documentary.

 

PRAKHAR BINDAL

Age: 26

Business idea: a Google Adsense for Movies

An entrepreneur, early-stage investor and the CEO of Axsiom, a private open-ended alternative investment vehicle exclusively invested in Internet domain names, web properties and early-stage Internet startups. The Joka resident moved to Delhi a few weeks ago.

What is your business idea?

A breakthrough technology which would take movie-advertising mainstream. The idea (patent pending) is an amalgamation of IPL advertising formats for the consumer while providing an Adsense-like platform for advertisers.

Your career milestones?

We have closed sales worth millions of dollars with clients in over 40 countries, including Fortune 100 companies. It has been just over two years since we started, and we have an asset base of over $10 million. We recently sold a medical domain for seven figures. An interesting deal which we facilitated was EntourageTheMovie.com.

What is the future of domain name investing?

Just as real estate prices increase as top locations are snapped up, so it is for the values of premium domain names. Very recently, 100.com was sold for just under a million dollars.

 

RESHMA PATRA

Age: 31

Business idea: Work with underprivileged women to make and sell embroidered saris

Graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2007. The Narendrapur resident has been exploring education, arts and music as avenues of social impact among the underprivileged for the last 15 years now.

What is your business plan?

The primary objective is to employ underprivileged women and give them an opportunity to become financially self-reliant. Moreover, sari sales remain unaffected by economic slowdown. Embroidered sari is in demand throughout the year. The idea is to procure raw material from wholesale markets in Bengal, get it designed, give it to women artisans for hand embroidery, and then sell it both in local as well as in global markets. Saris made by the women artisans will be promoted as TGC brand, that is The Green Corner, an NGO dedicated to serve a model village near Calcutta. I also intend to start my business with batik sari.

 

We wanted to work with and for the creative community by providing a platform where they could showcase their work, to better understand business insights and create a new breed of entrepreneurs with a keen knowledge and sense of business within the creative industry.

–– Vijay Nair, CEO, Only Much Louder, co-founders and organisers of The Coalition