Dehradun is fast establishing itself as a Talent Hub of North India. Youngsters from Dehradun are starting some unique startup nowadays. In last few years, Dehradun has witnessed a boom in start-up culture. But, these start-ups are not like the usual ones found in other cities. These are somewhat unique in their own field and probably one of its kind in Uttarakhand and in some cases India too.
Big Band Theory is another big name in this list. Big band Theory was founded in Chandigarh in the month of September last year and has now completed its one year. Today, we have the honor to have the whole team of Big Band Theory with us. Let’s have a small conversation with the team of Big Band Theory about their success and work.
First of all, I would like to congratulate you for completing one year. Now, tell us what is Big Band Theory all about?
Big Band Theory is not an event management company; we are also not an artist booking agency. We are a music company that is trying to change the kind of music people consume. The focus is to help artists bring out their original music to people.
We are :
* A Consultancy of Music.
* Music Marketeers.
* Curators.
We work with some awesome set of musicians each of whom is trying to bring out their original music to the masses.
We launch music, we build concepts, we launch projects and make gigs and concerts happen.
May we know more about your team and their responsibilities?
I(Akshay Ahuja) happen to be the founder. I am taking care of Business Development and Marketing.
Mansimran Singh is the Head of Artist & Repertoire. His work is to fetch new talent and curate shows. He makes sure that right kind of artist is playing at the right venue, we call it Band Branding.
Suyash Bahuguna is our relationship manager for Dehradun. He takes care of all the shows in Dehradun. He is also a photographer and makes some awesome content for publishing purpose.
Manjot Singh is also our relationship manager for Punjab. He is also helping us with Business development for that region.
Vipul Pant is our CTO. He is building our website and doing everything that we have no idea about. Our website is going through drastic changes and it's his one man army that is behind all the technical work.
Himanshi Dawar is the newest person in our team. She will be interning with us and will be working on a couple of projects related to outreach and marketing. Big Band Theory's next 12 months actually depend on her.
Nikhil Sharma is our legal advisor and Puneet Goyal and Ekta Sethi is our Chartered Accountants.
You started this venture in Chandigarh. Is any specific reason behind moving to Dehradun?
If we are moving to Dehradun that does not mean that we are withdrawing our operations from Chandigarh or rest of the cities. As a business, we always have to look out for viable options. Dehradun is a beautiful city as well. We are experiencing a good growth and prospects in this city; if things go well we have some awesome plans with music in this city.
In which cities do you provide your services and who are your clients?
We have done shows in:
Dehradun, Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Chennai. Our core operations started in January 2016; until now we have curated about 150 shows in 7 cities.
Our clients are the venues that accommodate live music. We are curating for places like WIC and BMG in Dehradun. We curate for Hard Rock cafe in Delhi and Gurgaon. Apart from this, our profile has some of the best venues in the country like BlueFrog, BluO, Best Western,Q-LA etc.
Any Plan to start your own music company?
Big Band Theory is already a music company. Next plan is to launch a music label. The working of this label will be very different. We want to distribute music for free and get rid of piracy. The revenue model will be a little different. We will talk more about it in times to come.
Akshay, you were working in Google. It was a white collar job and you must be earning well. Let us know when and how did you realize that you can do something in the field of music?
I have always been passionate about music and my drift towards originality in music was even more. Google was a wonderful life, awesome work and brilliant people to work with. Like some say – it was a dream job, but I soon realized that there is nothing like a dream job. You either have a dream or a Job. I did have a dream and that dream was Big Band Theory.
It acted like that one small drop of ink in a glass full of water that makes the whole water blue. After four years of working with Google, I was quite convinced that it's time to move on. My parents were smart enough to understand this and it just acted as a catalyst. I had put down my papers right on the day of my 4th Year anniversary with Google.
Do you guys have any plans to encourage new talents of Dehradun as well as the whole of Uttarakhand?
We are a consultancy for music. As a consultancy, we want to help young bands grow. We want to push them to create original content because that is what they will be known for in long run. We would definitely want to do this with artists and bands in Dehradun as well.