who says the band wanted to play in the world's largest cricket stadium. In the beginning, it sounded as a bizarre thought and finally it became the world's largest concert. We gave an economic lift of close to 700 crores to the city of Ahmedabad over two days. It's an expensive show. Our tickets were not expensive reality because there was a bot attack by secondary ticket sites from all over the world. Seven departments coming after you. Do you think there are forces who want you to shut up? Ashi Shim Rojani, founder of book my show. Movie ticket booking platform starts economy leading India leading business opportunities which are the kind of artists which India wants to consume. Now there's been a massive resurgence of independent music something like play show for the demand. We've had artists in the past who would say that I want a bright purple potato wafers and sometimes these riders are a trick because they want you to read everything. So you say that you're a cockroach. What do you mean by that? I'll say we went through the com bust. We went from 150 people down to six. We had zero revenues. I said we are survival even till the end of the world where the maximum revenue comes from. Our live events business today gives us about 40% of the revenue and now movies is down to 60%. Where is the next big opportunity? air, water, and food. We'll need all these three things. So, what's the origin of book my show? Smoking and [Music] drinking. Enjoy the show. Why would I do do something in Ahmedabad? Because concerts of this size don't happen there usually. Yeah. And if you hear it's Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, because there's already like a there's an urban audience which is ready to pay, ready to commute and there's a ready market. You guys be doing so many concerts there already. Yeah. Why Ahmedabad? That was first. Yeah. Then second is why Ahmedabad because there's no alcohol as well. Bombay we were anyways doing yeah coal play so that was done we were doing dy partle we announced two shows the band wanted to play in the world's largest cricket stadium it came as a as a thought from the band to say why can't we play at the Narendra Modi cricket stadium okay in the beginning it sounded as a bizarre thought right for various reasons obviously the band didn't know nobody knew You you cited it right. Infrastructure, alcohol, a cricket stadium, right? It's never been done before. Why Ahmedabad? Will consumers come? Is there a large enough population that will come for that show? Do they understand the music? All of that, right? A thousand questions. We had a thousand questions. So, there was a lot of people internally, externally who were like, "No, no, you can't." A thousand reasons why we shouldn't. But when somebody tells you no, it really excites me. It excites me to no extent. But for charity. You do something right and it'll be funded. Gujarat tourism there were ideas but stadium not available then I took it to u the Gujarat cricket association and BCCI and uh just like how I got me excited I shouldn't be saying it but Mr. Jes supremely excited. So now I had a partner in crime. So I went back to the band, the management, live nation and we said look it's happening but there are some changes here are the things. Now we got into execution mode and I'll tell you the execution mode was a what should the pricing be? Who is going to come for the concert? Will people come? Will it be locally from Gujarat? Will they come from outside? If they come from outside, uh do we have enough trains? And that time the problem was uh I spoke to uh we spoke to the railway minister. He's a great guy. Uh Kum Ia was on all the trains were busy with Kum. Mr. Ashwini Vashnab and his office, his secretary was very very helpful. Um he said it's hard but let let's work on it. Um the challenge was how do you transport people there because even if people were to come what's the infrastructure hotels so Ahmedabad's infrastructure is really improved right uh you look at the river banks the roads access to the stadium access out there's a metro line that terminates at the stadium uh so you can transport people but getting into the city there aren't enough flights from Bombay from Bangalore how do people come and when we sold the tickets there was a lot of controversy around that as well but I mean I'm happy to talk about it but 75% of the people mobile number 75% 25% 50% are coming from Ahmedabadist 40% drive show that was challenge. The second game indaterial, hydras, forklifts material on the end stage. How do you protect the pitch? Because stage it has a runway and it has a B stage and it has a C stage. B stage sits on top of the pitch and We had a pitch curator was working for over a year and an translucent light and UV rays. Forks damage platform on the pitch and the substitute pitches grow lights UV It will mirror the UV lights of the sun and grow lights roller. It was a whole exercise. It was a different exercise altogether. So there were a lot of twists and turns. Then food and beverage loss because alcohol will that substitute alcohol because Gujarat may prohibited will they enjoy will they have the same experience. So what we did was we there were extra flights Bombay connections Bombay and Bangalore city you can take a train and we had extra trains which the railway ministry gave us from Bombay which could come to the place then metrosa timing that people could then leave the same night because enough hotel inventory and finally it became the world's largest concert over 2 days and like I said 75% of the population came from outside of Gujarat and they all came in safely. They all went safely. They didn't miss alcohol. They had the world's greatest experience. [Music] live stream. There was a national anthem. Everybody stood up. The national colors were there and it was a celebration. So it all came together and 26th January. You can't sell alcohol. So it all worked out. It's an expensive show. Our tickets were not expensive. It's the cheapest anywhere in the world and we purposely kept it that way. We said we want to give the opportunity to as many people. Our tickets were the cheapest anywhere in the world. ground cap ticket to stand right near the stage $80. It was the cheapest ticket. But reality, that's a different ground tickets and then there were various prices. I can't control that. I'm stand clear im number mobile number unique identity transaction ID email address mobile number 37,000 Supreme Court, High Court, policeal India law enforcement company should not exist because secondary ticket market is not allowed in India. How can that how can those two or three companies which are foreign entities which have their offices in Estonia are selling tickets in India in the secondary market which are illegal by law. Is my job to go and shut them down? Then why are people calling you that you did it? This is see this is where people go hysteria social [Music] med,000 tickets and math divide Bombay Ahmedabad show and third show was 50,000. You divide that by four, right? If you look at that per showar can watch it, 36,500 people individuals could buy the tickets in a country of 1.4 4 billion people in a city of 20 million population out of which 35% of the population was from Maharashtra and if you say 25% were from Bombay 10% was from rest of outside of Bombay 65% of the people that came to Bombay to watch the show was from outside of Bombay demand. I don't have the ability to do more than five shows. We had five shows. We sold the tickets. There was a Q number. What had happened is where the only fault was that in the first show when we opened the queue our systems crashed and the reason it crashed for 7 minutes because there was a bot attack. There was a bot attacked by secondary ticket sites from all over the world and data because we had to prove it to law enforcement and in the courts and they saw the data. Millions and millions of bots had hit our system to pick up tickets and waiting room 2. So the bots could could hack into that system and therefore they the bots had taken over the first show. So what we did was that we reset the servers. They had to be reinitialized into the Q number. That was an error. But it was a genuine error and omission. It was not people forget that% just think nobody can stop me. I can sell it on book my show. What we then did we changed the process your next waiting room that we called it a waiting room waiting room. We gave you a randomized ticket to token ID randomized tok ticketing ID we repelled a lot of the bots because they could not you get a random ID. So we changed the process and then from when we reopened the second show and the third show in Bombay then the first show in Ahmedabad and second everything went off smoothly. We had more than seven departments after us. We had multiple police cases. It was relentless. We were going to department after department after department after department. We had summons against us. We have spent how many hours and time on giving statements and summons interrogation not because I was hiding behind as a leader in the company. We proved we open our databases. We showed everything. But seven departments coming after you. this big fiasco. Do you think there are forces who want you to shut down? No. No. I think this can't be just like normal people trying to do anybody's voice. They want actually curate s such kind of stuff. Look, the support from the central government, the support from the Gujarat government and the support from the Maharashtra government across law enforcement across this thing was phenomenal. They saw the value in this. say we gave an economic lift of close to 700 crores to the city of Ahmedabad. 700 crores with economic impact over 2 to three days. Yeah. The honorable home minister Harangi who did a who con initialized instituted a I am Ahmedabad study came up with this lift that we did a 700 cr lift to the economy of Ahmedabad. Why wouldn't anybody want this? He himself was very proud of the achievement. He's come up and made statements and I meant not not the government officials. exam and maybe the competitor could do it. No, no, I don't think I no I I look till I don't have proof of that. I think it's just loose dog to blame anybody. I I it's uncool, right? I don't think that is the case. I think this was some overzealious people who did not get a ticket. They used uh which is available to everybody the the might of the law. They went to court. some department thought that they should investigate because it was so in your face and the media just hyped it up to no extent which I think has to be measured right I think some fault lies there without you know understanding the crux of the matter they just hyped it because it was such a hot potato um every department felt it was their moral duty and responsibility why is there so much I think that was the only reason where it snowballed. You said 700 cr economy boost for one city. Yes. Over a weekend. Over a weekend. Weekend. Right. How um employment uh hotels, airlines, food, travel, uh merchandise, uh spends in the city when people come. We calculated per person what was the average spend when they came into Ahmedabad. not from the locals. Then there was an expanded view of the people that were outside the city but from Gujarat and people that came from other parts of the country. What did what was the GST? The GST impact was 72 crores. The overall impact was about 650 or close to 700 crores. The direct impact was about uh 250 crores which was a direct impact. So we broke it down into four or five. We got Ernston Young to do a a full report. We released uh a a massive report. How much does some show like let's say Coldplay cost? The biggest stadium you did Narendra Modi Stadium just give me an approximate cost. You can't give me an exact cost. I don't remember but I don't think it will be less than 30 40 crores. Can't be less than that. Just a setup and then there's the artist fee. then artist because see what happens is over there uh you have permissions, you have security, you have local law enforcement, you've got to pay for local law enforcement because they're coming from different parts of the of the state. Um there's cost of goods sold, there's merchandise, there's food wastage, um there's security, barricading, infrastructure setup, transport, travel, travel, boarding, lodging, internal transport. Now in the case of this show ground cover now there was only enough material which we own to cover one stadium. The second stadium did not have the material like we needed drivables and ground cover. So I called my friends in Israel and some of the material was lying in Georgia. We did a trans shshipment of half the material from Hifa port in Israel. Because of the situation there they were not using it. They're great friends of mine. Half the material came from Israel. Half the material went from Georgia by road and then it went trans shshipment to Greece and from Greece it came to Bombay. So two shipments have come from there to be able to do the second show. Material has come from Southeast Asia on some materials for the staging and delay towers. Some of the delay towers we own. So it was a global supply chain which had to arrive at a certain point get cleared transported internally. So therefore the cost went up because see if it was a show where we could reach in 4 hours to the next city. Yeah. But we had to have concurrent setups because if we were doing three shows in Bombay and two shows there there was a concurrent setup. So Costco in some cases when you're traveling and you're doing like in the case of Edin we had uh two stage. So we would do one stage in uh Punea, the second stage was being set up in Hyderabad. So the Punea stage would then jump to Chennai and the Hyderabad stage would then jump to Bangalore and then that stage would go but then the stage that we used between Bhutan and Shillong we could not it could not be a part of this rig because the time taken to go to Bhutan and unrig that stage we could not make the Delhi show. So normally you would have two stages what would jump. In this case we had three stages because Shillong and Bhutan were sharing one stage because Shillong was the second last show in the run and Bhutan was the first show so we could share that stage. So there's too many too many there's like I said there's no straight answer. What's the what's the technical or an artist radar for something like Coldplay show? What do the demand what do they ask for? Look, I've known apart from like lights, shows like is there something two or three highlights which makes Coldplay show different? No, look, it is a very immersive experience, right? And there's a lot of love and connect with the with the fans. I mean, I just think they're just masters of their art and they're very passionate about what they do. Uh whether it's the whole touring team, the management, the band itself, they just love what they do. Um they love the connection with the fans. The music is phenomenal. It's I think one of the highest loved and most loved bands in the country. Every song uh the fans know there is unlimited demand there for for for uh an artist like that. But they're just good people. They're just inherently good people. Uh I think the Xylo bands create a beautiful immersive experience. What is there in Xylo bands? This is RF technology and what happens is with the Xylo bands you can control it with the music and the light to have a shared experience. So you can do a flag of the Indian color, you can have different colors, you can when people are at a stadium, you can actually write stuff based on people's bands. So rather than putting out your phone and not enjoying that experience and putting up lights, you don't need to do that. And in fact, there are points in the show where uh I think Chris tells people that put your phones in your pocket, put your hands in the air, right? And then there's um there's fireworks and there's pyros and there's immersive experience to share that music otherwise you can listen to music at home, right? And I think that's why the shows are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Whether it's the the LED screens, whether it's what the band does for uh for the environment, uh how how firm and strongly they believe and stand for it, it connects with a lot of people and it also inspires the youth, right? When you're there and uh but is there something something extra that you've heard from someone like Coldplay or Ed or Travis? This is what I need. High look, they're very high demanding artists. That's the reason that's so big. High demand. That's why they are where they are because they want perfection in everything that they do. Perfection in the sound, the lighting, the rig, the What do they ask extra? No, every artist has writers. M we've had artists in the past who would say I want Doritos chips on the right side of my bed with this ketchup or and sometimes these writers are a trick because they want you to read everything and some things are just not possible and you somebody in my artist team goes and said this is not possible and they're like it's okay like what like it could be something really bizarre that I want to uh bright purple uh potato wafers the color of the potato wafer should be bright No, that's not possible. Maybe it's not possible. So, somebody says that this is not possible or something is not available in India if there's an alternative. But it's just to check that you've read the writers, right? The fine print. How much do they charge? Like what do you think? No, it ranges. Yeah. From how much does it charge to get like a green day? Look um for you there will be different cost I'm sure. No, no, it's not just different cost. See, Lola Paludza, we have a very different uh method of working. We have a artist budget and we work backward. There is the headline fee for the artist on day one, day two and then there is a sub headline then there is a so we have a it's a format and it makes our job harder because paying any sort of money to get an artist is not what we do then it's not a business like I said this is not a passion project it's a business and therefore for Lula pludza we have an artist budget which is purely based on number of tickets brands that participate costs that are there and so we have a number so we do this in partnership ship with C3 who are our partners. Um and uh Charlie Walker is a is a great mate of mine and and we work very hard. It's the third year now in a row. Hugely successful. Uh turn the corner. Uh we're now prepping for 2026. We will now announce at some point the dates and um eventually the lineup. So it's business. It's it's work where this franchise has to grow over a period of time. Same with Bandland. Same with Sunburn. um sunburns in its 17th year and so it you have to work backward a one-off show of a uh of a green day will be very different from a multi- tour within India because the cost gets deferred right they are deferred over uh or shared across three markets five markets if it's a part of a run then the cost differs give me some number look cold play green day anyone I don't think it's fair for me to share uh artist numbers but I I'll tell you the approx I'm not the bigger bands I'll tell you the bigger bands the bigger bands can go from a million and a half to 8 million could be the artist fees could be anywhere in that range uh then you have bands which are within the 150k to a million but the point is and it it also matters whether they want to do it whether it's a versus deal whether are you paying a minimum guarantee some artists are like pay me a flat guarantee I don't care some artists I'll give you a lower guarantee, but you give me a ref share. You give me a Yeah. So, you give me a spill over, right? So, you do a um uh you do a uh beyond a certain amount, you do a share. And there are some artists who are saying, I want to play the market, I'll do a B versus D. You don't pay me anything. Let's co-produce together and Exactly. Exactly. So, as the trust in the market build, so you know, India was a flat guarantee market. Mhm. There was no trust in the market. That is the reason what I was trying to tell you earlier. We jumped into this business out of accident and out out of a need and desperation because the acts were unwilling to come to India. We had one act in 10 years like a big act then nobody would come and the reason was that there was no trust in the market. People were underdeclaring tickets, not paying taxes, not sharing the data with the artists, underdeclaring revenues, short-changing the consumer, health and safety issues, food and beverage was short changed. And all the money was being taken by the promoter by saying, "I don't care about the consumer. I don't care about the government. I don't care about the artists. I only care about myself." And that is the truth. That is why nobody scaled this. All the money was being taken home. Basically was daylight robbery. Government also in its wisdom for whatever reason e tax was very high. It was anywhere between 28% to 45%. You can't do business when the GST was 28%. During the pandemic that's another thing that I did. I went to the minister of state for home and the finance minister at that time and minister of state for finance. So she put me on to the minister of state for finance who I know and I reasoned with him. He was very very gracious. He called his GST department. He saying ash you'll have to go through the process. We went through four cycles of submissions and the government dropped the GST and it was an advantage which went to the whole industry. It wasn't for me. I was obviously a beneficiary but they saw the wisdom and they dropped the GST from 28% to 18%. Wow. And zero up to 499. We are still working with them to say look if this has to scale we still need nationalization and it has to be done in a staggered manner. So I think infrastructure, public infrastructure spending as you've seen there has to be more infrastructure. It's we still struggle in India with venues, stadiums, arenas, staging, safety, security, ingress, egress, getting to a stadium, parking, uh metro lines or train stations going under the stadium or an arena having enough of them. The biggest challenge for artists growth, Indian artist growth has been we don't have venues which are 50 person rooms, 100 person room, a 250 person room, going to 500, then going to an auditorium which is 1500, then 2,500, an arena of 5,000 to 8,000, arenas of 15,000 to 20,000 and then stadiums and festival grounds. We have bars and restaurants where you can play at a small place and nobody cares and everybody's doing cover versions or straight away there's a stadium on open field. You don't have anything in between. There's no career path. Any global artist on the live side went through this career path globally and there was a culture of going out that was built where you could go and watch. We don't have that. And therefore with us with festivals that becomes extremely important for discovery of new music. When you come to Lola and you're seeing 40 artists, you may come for a a Green Day or a Sting or Imagine Dragons, you may come for a Shawn Mendes, but you're discovering an Aurora, you're discovering Jonita Gandhi, you're discovering Niladri Kumar who's one of the greatest electric satar players and he did a live set with 5,000 people standing to watch him, right? And kids standing to watch him. And so with 20 25 Indian artists, the Hanuman Khan set was phenomenal, right? So many fresh people who had not seen Hanuman Khind may have heard his music but not seen his entire set were there. So I think festivals are a great way of giving Indian artists who are supremely talent but talented but never got the big stage or did not get a large enough audience for them to try out or experiment or or get initialized with their music. Festivals do that. Tell me the concert start Like how do you who says like all of this? How do you decide? We work with other partners as well. First of all, these tours are expensive tour ready market and they are performing in North America. then they're doing Europe, then they're doing Australia, New Zealand, then they're coming to Asia. Cycle has to be between October and May at best maybe cycle either you are putting in shows with South Africa, Middle East or you're doing something with Southeast Asia, Australia because one off one there's no you can't make money. Neither band can make money, neither you can make money. It's hard multiple tours. Multiple it has to be multiple sides. So there's it's a part of a tour, a global tour. So that is number one. Number two, then the artist needs to connect with his fans. He he or she needs to believe that India is an important market. Now here is where or we we are looking for shows between October actively between October and uh May and there's a bunch of things that we that goes into the analysis Spotify YouTube music what is your um stats then we look at other uh professional sites which we subscribe to then there's an art there's a lot of science which will tell you this but you look at trend we have people within our company which understand music and our musicians and our curators. So there's a whole bunch of people that are constantly analyzing what are the pathmaking trends. Suraj who's Hanuman kind Lola Pala one and three he also played Coachella. Dilj did a collab with me with Ed Shirin he also played Coachella. AP did Lola one he also played for so we you know are good curators we are good judge of what we do. Jonita played main stage for us. For Ed, we had uh opening acts from Mali, from Dot, uh Cayenne, uh Arman obviously. Uh so we worked with a bunch of Indian artists and only the glory goes to the western acts where we did 40 to 50 shows. We did 900, we sold tickets for 900 shows in India, Indian artists, 900 shows in a year. We are constantly looking career developer and are we doing bigger shows what does the artist want come the first time low ticket price show many years later he came back then but much higher ticket price cut to March last year in the round at the turf club. So bar low ticket price, kazar, very high ticket price, patch high ticket price and then we did a show of eight cities with Ed between when Coldplay happened just after that Bhutan then Punakia, Hyderabad, uh Chennai, Bangalore, Shillong, Delhi and the artist wanted it. Ed wanted to go deep in the country. He loves the country and he said, "Yeah, I want to do an endstage format. You all produce it and I want to go deep." It was his aspiration. We analyzed with cities how is it going to be easy, hard, what was possible, what wasn't possible, what rigs and stages can go, how do we share rigs between uh northeast and Kolkata and Shillong and Bhutan because the borders are closed. How do the trucks go to those borders? Then from there the head of the truck, how do customs get cleared? how will the head of the truck change because the drivers have to be different for Bhutan because they know how to drive on those. So it was a complicated it was a it was a logistic even the doing the shows between Ahmedabad and um Bombay we had two rigs and two stages and two coverings but a lot of the rig was common. How do you get to move 39 to 40 trucks between Bombay and Ahmedabad within a very short period of time? Because Bombay show Tuesday and next show in Ahmedabad was Saturday. There wasn't enough time. So we did two dry runs with GPS tracks with that much weight because container it moves faster between Bombay and Ahmedabad. Maharashtra police and Gujarat police gave me a corridor between Maharashtra and Gujarat road. Normally what should take you but a truck will take you was taking 36 to 40 hours because traffic jam. So they created a blue corridor for us. Wow. Where we took that ton of truck and we did a GPS tracking on alternative routes on how to get there within 18 hours. And then this movement happened where Bombay show Tuesday. So people who came for Saturday and Sunday would have seen a very different exit plan than Tuesday because Tuesday we had to tear down the stage and tear down the equipment very quickly work within 4 hours load the trucks and move them and get them within 16 to 18 hours to Ahmedabad so that the loading can happen in Ahmedabad. So it was a logistical nightmare. So it's quite interesting when you break down the challenges and problems on how do you put up the show. So we have to decide on movement of trucks uh equipment cost uh artists pricing their pricing uh their ability and their need and want to play uh stats pricing to the end consumer in some cases brands is it acceptable to brands or not. So there's a lot of math and decisioning that goes in which goes into a pot and then it's an art at the end of the day to say but none of this like in the past which you would have seen is based on personal preferences. This is a business. It's not because I like an artist I want that art. Of course I would love it but if I like it I'll go somewhere else and watch the show. It's not my passion project. It's not a party that I'm throwing for myself to charge people money. It's a business and it's meant it's meant to be value accreative to my fans and the customers and if they see value in it then we'll do it. If we can make money and there is this thing we'll do it. It's not something that I want. All this time it's been I want this artist because it's my personal need and preference. That is what was happening till we jumped into this business. We got into this business by chance in 2018. Till then we were just a platform. Mhm. There were various reasons why grudgingly we got into this business in 2018 and then we've only thought about things differently and that's why it scaled up. We creating a new industry. It didn't exist, right? It was a mom and pop industry because most of the companies were doing B2B shows. They were doing launch conferences. They were doing weddings. We don't do weddings. We don't do launch conferences. We don't do B2B. Anything which touches an end consumer point which is ticketed is what book my show does. I'll tell you one of the first things I heard about you from somebody and I learned that lesson and it was really good. I don't even know if you've said that. Yeah. It's just like somebody said something about you and I I felt it was good and I in my head I keep giving you credit for it. It's a cockroach theory. Have you said it? Oh, you said it many times. Perfect. Then so you say that you're a cockroach. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Tell me in your words. I love it when I heard it for the first time. I want everybody to hear it from you. So you know when when I started when I founded book my show along with uh my co-founders and for the first 10 years of our journey as book my show's journey uh by the way the name of the company is big tree entertainment and that hasn't changed right in 25 we are in the 26th year and so for the first 10 years we were told India will go the US way all right copy everything from the US and India will go the US me. Then came a second wave of entrepreneurs and we were told for the next 10 years or at least what you you heard is that India will go the China way. And I kept telling people India will go the India way, right? There's there's no other way. Uh you have to be proud of who you are, who your consumers are. The moment you try to emulate what's happening in the US or China or anywhere else, you're setting yourself up for failure. Uh you can learn from some lessons. You can't say that we are going that way. And in those conversations the one thing that always came about is and I find that I find certain things about and I was born and raised in this country. I was born and raised in Bombay right in a 500 m radius like I made the big move 10 years ago 500 m down the road. So it's not like I'm looking at an outside view or a western view. But the one thing that really pisses me off in India it's disappointing is that we don't celebrate entrepreneurs for entrepreneurship. We celebrate celebrities. We celebrate uh being famous. We celebrate how much money do you have, which car you come and what watch you have. It was in context to this unicorn question that kept coming up that are you unicorn? And then one day unicorn unicorn. So I said I said have you seen a a horse with a horn? I said animal it's not real. I said cockroach. So he said what do you mean by cockroach? So I said we went through the com bust in 99 uh 2000. We went through the com bust. We went from 150 people down to six including an office helper and then we went through the global financial crisis in 2008. And then the biggest one for us was the pandemic. Yeah. Because that was we were wiped out, right? We had zero revenues, zero anything. And so somebody said, "What do you mean by cockroach?" I said we are survivors. We'll survive a nuclear blast. We'll open a microwave oven and you'll find us there and we'll survive. We'll be there even till the end of the world. So in context to this unicorn question I was said. Then I think over the years uh somebody caught on to this right and they said I know you're going to say cockroach. Okay. Give us another animal that you It was like a question for a zoo. So I said uh we are mongrels. So he's saying what do you mean by mongrels? I said look yeah we are very appreciative if somebody comes and pets you and we are very gracious when somebody gives you something but we are survivors. It's a dog fight out there. It's a doggy dog world out there. Some days you've got to run and hide if there's a pack of dogs and some days it's a street fight. You've got to fight. So we are dogs because I think at least me when I look back in my journey entrepreneurs I think majority of us entrepreneurs are cockroaches only cockroaches just bang on cockroaches from a cockroach you end up becoming like a vulture or eagle or whatever you want to so Raj you know one of The things about while we're on this subject of cockroach I think few lessons to draw from it are that keep your e ego in check you know don't think you're bigger than anything but don't make out to be more than who you are and what you are and the moment you keep your ego in check you tend to learn a lot you respect consumers you you look at things around you on what more can you build what are the other things And I think more than survival, I'll tell you if you contextual contextualize this in in um the parlance of business or entrepreneurship, I think companies that do well over a period of time are the ones that manage their down cycle or downturn better. And that's the uh you know piece about the survival piece. So, it's not just about survival for eternity, but it's about survival and managing that survival in the downturn. Look, as a sailor, I keep saying that that when you've got high winds, it equalizes all sailors. You can't tell the difference between skill because in high wind sailing, it's very easy. It's the low wind sailing that makes true sailor. wind, adjusting the sales and doing the right things because you can't moan and complain about the sun, the tide, the wind, anything. All you can do as a sailor is adjust your sales. And so again, it's a very inward-looking uh theory rather than complaining and looking outward. So as sailors, you're always looking inward, number one. And secondly, it's about lowwind sailing. And that's the analogy with cockroaches as well that if you can survive or flourish or get better ahead or get better during the downturn when the winds are high and when you have tailwinds everybody does well that is easy. What's the origin of book my show online like how did it come? Smoking and drinking. So I don't smoke but agency on Netflix was exactly like madman. So it was a very I used to love my job. Um it was very unhealthy environment to be in constant smoke around uh salary and I got the I did the best as a flunky as a management traininee so I got a massive raise and I think salary and I got a massive raise my next year's salary was my best friend today my co-founder he's a he's a brother to me he was uh working in um South Africa. He was actually in Botswana. So we did our MBA together. He went off. He said I'll try and uh take a shot at things there. So um I said I'm coming over to see you and I heard a radio commercial trying to sell rugby tickets online. And this was an alien concept to me. ticket. You went to a movie theater timing that your box office is open from this time. Then in the afternoon there was a lunch break and then it would open again. And there used to be dress circle. No, there used to be advance and current counters. I don't know how old you are. Maybe you don't remember this. You're too young. You look young. So I'm 51. There was a advance and there used to be a current counter. So you have to choose advance current and within that there were three pigeon holes. One used to be uh there's a railway it used to be uh stall um balcony and dress circle. So you had to choose key I'm standing in advance of current line and then you have to choose con counter you want to go to which section and if the guy was sold out and you used to sit on the steps waiting for the box office to open up and more often than none the guy at the box office was handinand glove with a panukhan across all movie theaters in the country across all stadiums in the country cricket stadiums everywhere and the black tickets were being sold sold at a pawn shop. At the pawn shop. So the guy saying it's sold out. Mhm. He knows the demand of the number of people outside. He's said it's gone and it's available there. So this was the scene. So for me to listen to this radio commercial trying to sell rugby tickets online and saying you'll get your tickets in advance stadium 10% food and beverage and merchandise. They are incentivizing you to buy advanced tickets online. magical. So anyways, I thought through that and it was in my mind and I kept mulling over the idea through the trip. So this was under a big tree at Storms River Valley between Job and Cape Town, Big Tree Entertainment Private Limited. That's the name of the company. That's the genesis. So it has its roots in South Africa. We reached a place called Stalin Bosch which is near Cape Town to youth host you know it's the wine growing region of uh of South Africa just say Nasik Valley Napa Valley and US to uh it's the you can go for wine tasting and all wine tasting I was 24 years old but this is something to do. So what they do for this wine tasting is 10 rand local South African currency and they give you five short glasses of wine different different wine and in some vineyards it's free to most people used to take wine they'll smell it and then they take it through the pallet and the teeth and then what it does to the pallet the burst of flavors and then you spit it out. I come from a country of scarcity. That time 99 I'm a Cindi. Anything free in life is valuable. [Music] glasses into five. My head was spinning. Next morning I woke up at a youth host in a bunk bed. Where was I? In the meantime. So that's how big tree of book my show started. It started with smoking and it ended with drinking and ba I'm coming back came back without a job business plan bay and facts she bact was a one one and a half pager which was almost like an elevator pitch to chase capital partners JP Morgan and the guy who invested in me bhat ramani and aniluja were you from an affluent family I was from a middle-ass family uh born and raised in Bombay but I we as kids were never made to feel middle class in the sense that I'm I'm a kid of immigrant parents. Both my mom and dad came from Pakistan. When uh the 1947 partition happened, we were never made to believe or feel we were secondary to anything. So, so when you ask me were we wellto-do, we were in our heads and in our outlook to life in hard cash. We were not. Then why do you think Bat invested in you? your first investor. You were not even from like a big shot company or a job position. Why would somebody give two crores and that time it was not even today I can still think somebody can raise two crores. It's much easier today. That time was an alien concept. Raj, I'll tell you something. A I think people have lost their way on uh analysis paralysis, overanalysis paralysis. Even I'm an angel investor. I have more than 30 35 uh investments and you get some right, you get some wrong. And I think that's what I guess uh investing was all about and should be is that you look at the market opportunity very quickly. You should have that it's a science but it's also an art, right? It's intuition. You look at a market opportunity. You look at the idea. And the more most important thing is you look at the guy in front of you. You look him in the eye. You look at the first handshake. And you look at can you do business with the guy? Are they going to go long? Does he conviction moral values integrity? I'm a serial entrepreneur. I'm on my fifth venture. Why shut down? Investment. Your job is not to build something great or something big. Then you should be an investor. Then your job is to exit. uh Microsoft look at the big conglomerates in India Reliance Tatas and they keep scaling building and doing things within that organization they're not saying I'm exiting exit that I'm a fifth time entrepreneur I'm a seventh time entrepreneur in some way that's what you're trying to tell me exactly yeah you that means what you're trying to do is try and maximize that value for yourself and exit so that you can move to the next venture. If you have the conviction on building something and build within like book my show is morphed today you may say book my show started as a movie ticketing platform today we're not we then move to a marketplace for non-mov today we are one of the largest concert promoters in Asia and producers today most of our time goes into hardware into infrastructure we will eventually become a real estate company at some point with venues and we are a media house in some sense where advertising has become a very important part and a content creation house is the area that we are moving towards but that's within the realms of the money that you took from your early investors creating value and believing in something right and you build all of this within that framework by now I should be on my seventh venture true you have your own views but I think I am also of the same mindset that you should build something for a very long term because I also think in 10 20 30 years framework even So I'm very young but I've always done that. I've done even like my all the businesses that I've done I've done like four five businesses but all of this is under one company something that you also said like I started with something but then I saw opportunity to make it bigger but inside the same company meaningful true inflection point Because problems then magic in this country by the time you understand boss it's a it's a hard place to do business but it's also rewarding because it's transformational it's new you're creating a market and that's why nobody else can do it. Those are your modes. But if you can create something in two years, please tell me the magic portion. You may get an exit. You may get a lot of money, but that is by making an idiot out of somebody. That's no problem. You're not a strong enough entrepreneur. set even with tennis even with sailing with anything you have to have all skill set. So you've not created that skill set. No, I agree with that. I would come from same mindset which which I'm saying because I believe in the a lot of guys may not agree. A lot of people would won't agree because a lot of people who I know have also made tons of money just by doing something for 2 years and then changing. But is that the correct barometer is what I'm saying as an entrepreneur as a look I have a different philosophy. There's no wrong and right answers but I just feel that you're best suited to be an investor and there are great and you add value by doing that as well. You have a great skill if you can identify seven eight hits like this which exit and do well and create shareholder value and you're a great investor. Warren Buffett does that for a living. Uh and don't call yourself an entrepreneur. That's what you're saying. They call yourself an investor. Call yourself an entrepreneur. Investor. entrepreneur whatever but you're not building for the long run I mean you tell me today you don't like those entrepreneurs you wouldn't invest no I I do not like that's a very harsh word I just wouldn't invest in somebody who came like I said if somebody came and said company thank you very much I'll watch you from the sideline I mean it's it's not something that I know the guy will scoot uh and I've had a few of those where I did put money in somebody and then they were very easy to shut down they were very quick to shut down like when it got hard and he said I ran out he didn't try something else he didn't stick with it he didn't put his own money he said yeah it's not working I'm shutting down I'm going to do something else and you said India entrepreneurs are not celebrated for entrepreneurs entrepreneurship what do you mean by that they celebrated they're celebrated for the value he's 5 billion he's 7 billion he's 10 billion he has a Ferrari he has a Lamborghini that's his lifestyle that's the watch that he wears this is who he's dating This is where he hangs out and I'm saying look at it for the work that I think some of the finest entrepreneurs India I've seen uh I mean I don't know if people give those guys enough credit but I think are fantastic is make my trip look at Deep Kalra and Rajesh Mago conducted themselves phenomenally no controversy built hard built it over a period of time took the company public last five or seven years they were slammed the stock price was flat it's now gone up 3x 4x in in the last seven years isn't they're there right for 25 27 years I he's somebody who comes top of my mind he's somebody also I I I have a friendship with but I'm seeing guys like that right you need to where are they in the news cycle where are they in in the media you're talking about all these artists right and you said something specific which I have to ask you because it's like elephant in the room trends yeah you said you keep analyzing trends what trend do you see which are the kind of artists which India wants to consume now And who are the global giants which you see in foreseeable future to come in in India and start playing? Let's start with international music, right? Country music has had a big resurgence and I think uh while the numbers are not that big in India yet, but they're getting mainstream. Uh Teddy Swims is a country music uh star uh or he's he's got his leanings now. Post Malone, which was a hip-hop artist, has released a country music album. Uh Taylor Swift's music is steeped in country music, right? Four chords, but she's a pop artist, one of the biggest in the world. So, I think there's a big big uh trend there and it's it flows in different ways. Uh if you see Shania Twain's um uh documentary on how she made it mainstream, etc., I think hip-hop is huge with the younger audience like 10, look at our sales for Travis Scott, right? Gone. In 20 minutes, we sold 110,000 tickets. Um, it's that cohort which is 10 years to 30 years, that range. It's that cohort where they listen to that music. I think in the last 5 years and especially through the pandemic, there's been a massive resurgence of independent musicians. Yeah. People that are making music, they're writing their expression, they're composing their music, writing what they feel, what they feel strongly about. It's not somebody else's version of it should fit within my film or whatever. It is my music and I am uh I I fiercely guard my emotions, my thoughts and I'm writing it because I feel like and you're seeing that pick up. And there's platforms like ours where we are doing so many shows. We have college festivals. We do about 400 college festivals a year uh through our business tribe vibe. So we've got tribe vibe, we've got sunburn, and then we've got our main BMS live touring business. So there's a big resurgence where independent musicians can drop a song, they get popular and famous. Uh look at Hanuman Kind right big you look at or it's just look at the amount of music that's coming out. It's it's phenomenal. Is there any Indian artists who you have seen reinventing themselves as per their audience or is it too new for us? Look at Djit. Look at uh AP. Uh I think uh the same kind of music. No, but AP has come up with two new songs. They're very wildly different from his two new songs. They're very different. Uh if you saw Diljit's earlier work to what he came up with, I think Jonita has come up with a lot. Cayan, a very young artist, but she's a DJ and she sings live. Um, uh, Arman, his music is evergreen and classical. I think, uh, he's he's he's great. I really like, uh, Dot. She did a set for us in Bandland, which was massive, very young artist, but she had a big set. She did, uh, you know, she did trumpets and and, uh, the saxophone, and there was a lot of brass on on on stage. I was very impressed. I just met her the other day and she's got some new concept. She's she's a thinking artist. There are many thinking artists who constantly want to push the envelope on new stuff and then you get inspired to do stuff with them. You want to make it better. You want to make it bigger. You want to introduce them to to other artists to do collabs. You want to give them a bigger stage. Um you want to slot them in the right places so that audiences see them. Who's the next artist after them? So that they get exposure. And it's that collaboration that we are constantly working on. Look at Hanuman kind. I mean, he's been I I love the guy, right? Yeah. You've mentioned it 20 times. Why do you like him? Even Jonita. And I'll And I'll tell you why specifically. They're investing on the live touring side. They put in a lot of money in Lola. Both these artists, whatever we paid them, we paid them. They put in more money than what we paid them. They they put in 2x more than what we paid them into their show. So if you saw those flags, the design, the stage design, his clothes, the props on the stage, the flags in the audience, it costs money. There's ideiation, there's time, effort, energy, and thought that has gone in from the artist side to be able to say, I want to put out something out there which will be big, meaningful, and car and carry me forward. That's why I respect them. Joe did the same. She put money out of her own pocket to be able to put on that big show there, right? And I think that's a lesson for a lot of artists in India to learn that when they see these global artists putting in whether it's Coldplay, whether it's Ed Sher, whether it's uh uh Green Day, whether it's any of these global acts today, you're seeing the success of their large shows and the they have put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears and money of them out of their own pocket. Each of these shows are not cheap. uh somebody's funding that show to take it to that level and then it becomes famous. It's a multi-million dollar investment. And I'm so I'm not saying everything has to be a multi-million dollar. You do it within your own framework and write and work hard to do that. But don't think that it's going to come easy that you put on a four piece band and go up. You've got to invest something in it for it to be it's a show. Yeah. Otherwise, it could be a studio. You could listen to it in your car on on the speakers. There has to be something for the audience which is different. Whether it's your stage design, whether it's the backdrop, whether it's the LEDs or the IMAXs, whether it's your stage coming forward. What are you doing different to be able to put on a show for your audience which is reflective of you and your personality, your album, your song, and your music. And it's live, right? And what is the interactability? What are you doing by pulling in people? when Billy gave his guitar to this guy. Yeah. Um my team tracked him down. He's from Jamshedpur. Uh this was not a plant. It it was real. He's been one of the biggest punk rock fans since he was growing up. Um he lives in Jamshedpur. His uh brother lives in Bombay and he was there with his brother watching the show. He got pulled up. That guitar is a custom guitar. Billy has only given that guitar out once before in his life. And this was the end of this tour before he went and they played in Chicago where uh he could get the custommade guitar made again. This guitar is $50,000 and he just give it to this kid and he said it's yours. Now those moments get captured for life. It's a $50,000 guitar which was given away. Uh it's not one of your $1,000 guitar. And so and it's a special moment and it wasn't a plant. It wasn't fake. It was organic. There was a kid he said and the guy played it well by the way. He's phenomenal. He sent us another video of him playing another song and I have that video just outstanding. But what's your business model today where the maximum revenue comes from? The movie business is almost negligible. Oh, you're talking about the whole business or festival? The whole business like book my show as a as an So look, let me let me try and answer that till about 10 or 10 years ago maybe 15 years 10 to 12 years ago. um 90 plus% of our 95% of our revenue came from the movies business and it was 90% of that was concentrated in the top eight cities today 50% of our business on the movie side comes from the top 26 cities and 50% of our growth is came coming from rest of India so we're present in 700 cities and towns so that's a big data point and and and a change that we're seeing like I told you about the Brazil of India Brazil of India and and the changes that we're seeing So that's that's one data point. The other is that our marketplace business for non-mov events we had about um 35,000 plus events that were listed on the platform in the last fiscal and u that coupled with our live events business today gives us about 40% of the revenue and now movies is down to 60%. I mean it's not down but as a mix of our business and then there's the media side of the business which is highly profitable which is advertising because it goes straight to the bottom line. What is advertising? Uh advertising on the app if you see. So one is sponsors and brand partners that come in which goes into the piano of the live side. Yeah. while putting up an event and then there's advertising that you can come on the book my show platform uh which we uh allow and work with advertisers because of the high caliber and uh quality of audience that book my show has. Tell me what was the toughest part of your life going through the pandemic on letting the number of people that we let go getting the business back on track not knowing a light at the end of the tunnel. every time you saw a light at the end of the tunnel, there was another train coming towards you. Um, not being in control of the situation because India was shutting down, opening, shutting down, opening. So, I think that was a very very hard phase. Uh, it wasn't easy because all that you've said um it reminds me of a personal theory that I believe in. It's called the blind spot. I believe all human beings, everybody has blind spots, right? The person who has lesser blind spots usually tend to win in life. And by blind spot I mean you don't know what's going to happen. Maybe the weather can be changed the country's reality can be changed the market the way it changing people would change the decision you made money whatever XYZ things which you don't know as unknown and know how. And over the years in your journey of going from zero to now becoming such a successful story, you learned certain things which no more are blind spots. Right. Right. What can be that blind spot for you which was a blind spot before and now it is no more. You have learned something and that is why you're winning. I met a monk uh who's a performance coach uh who I really love. He lives in Chiang Mai. He made me realize uh things about energy and energy management and a lot about myself. So one thing that I have um figured and I figured very late in my life that I'm add ADHD dyslexic and dcalculous. I didn't know this. So I struggled through life not knowing this which was great. Right? So I didn't have this at the back of my head. But what I've also discovered through observation of other people who've given me this feedback that you have a six sense, right? And I may have probably developed this since I was born as a kid because uh I don't have these skills. I don't have these analytical skills. I I mix numbers, I mix letters, I mix words, I replace them. Uh uh ADHD is no fun. But I didn't know what it meant till I discovered a lot. What do you think? Where is the next big opportunity for someone who is probably in their 20s, still in one of these advertising agencies working right now the way you used to work on a fixed salary of 20 30 50,000 rupees? Where do you see the next opportunity? Yeah, look this country what we did over the last 25 years or what our parents did in the last 75 years the rate of change is faster than change itself today. What you will see in the next 5 years is what we saw in our lifetime in the last 25 years and what our parents saw in the last 75 years. The opportunities are galore. Whether they are in uh the nonprofit space, there's 400 million people that are underserved. That's an opportunity. There's the whole Brazil of India. That's an opportunity. There is this super high spender 5 million base. There's an opportunity. I'm not going to be prescriptive of business you should be in. But tell me where there isn't opportunity. Look at the public infrastructure spending. Look at defense spending. Look at what's going to be in terms of tech and defense. The only thing what I would say is don't copy things from the west to do just basic consumer stuff. Do something new. Do something innovative. Build something meaningful. Create IP. Own IP. Create platforms. Don't take somebody else's platform and build on top of that. Like if somebody's built an AI platform, you build an engine on top. Create something, sell it in one or two years. That's BS. I mean creates something which comes out of India. Look at Israel, right? The maximum number of billion or unicorns that came out of that country. Air, water and food. What are you doing? Everybody can talk about AI. Think about it. And all 1.4 4 billion and we will max out at 1.7 till our population starts going down. We'll need all these three things. Yeah. And it's it's getting terrible day by day. It's hard. It's but you it has to reverse. You have to reverse the trend and you have to find innovation. You have to invest money. You have to do pathbreaking tech to be able to do that. I'm sure somewhere someone has already a working on it. You need an entire movement of people to be able to do that. Look at look at the agriculture sector in Israel. It's barren land but they produce the most amount of agriculture. All your drip irrigation everything came from Israel and today we are using itation. That's why we need it. That's what we need. Correct. Perfect. All right. Perfect. Thank you so much. It was pleasure talking to you. That was really good. I hope we could do this again sometime next year. 2 years later, we'll do it and we'll go much deeper on the things that we skipped for sure. Hi, how are you? Very good. Very good. Pleasure to meet you. Likewise. Yeah. A lot of notes. Little bit of notes. It is like how are things? Good. Very good. Exciting times. I didn't know where the recording was. I think in my calendar it was opposite Yash. So I know Adi. I went into Yashaj. Oh shooting inside the guy sing where is the shooting is it a music recording I said no it's a raj show I said is a friend I'll call Adi this that there's a little bit of confusion till s and she said come but you know I get out of my home I go to airport and I see book my show building right there and I'm always like one day I'm going to have like building and have like bra written on it like figuring out written on it because the way bookmach show is written To me, it's like a daily reminder for what you're doing. Come over to the office anytime. Thank you so much. And number three episode one conversation can change someone's life. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out. [Music]