House of Experts Ep 34: Vibha Kagzi in conversation with Gunjan Arya, CEO of OML Entertainment

House of Experts is a show that ReachIvy kick-started to help those who are unclear about their career choices. We hope through these sessions with some very successful people, we can shed light on a new career path every week. House of Experts plans to make a collection of interactive and informative sessions with experts from various domains.
Vibha Kagzi, the host, is the Founder and CEO of ReachIvy.com, a premium study abroad and career consultancy organization. Vibha, a Harvard alumna, is a successful entrepreneur and believes in helping others chalk out their future careers.

In episode 34 of House of Experts, we were fortunate to host, CEO of OML Entertainment. OML Entertainment Pvt Ltd, a new media and entertainment company that partners with creators to build content IPs & live experiences that impact culture, and help brands and platforms to build equity.

OML has created festivals like NH7, EDC India, Stage42, The Coalition and has worked with artists like Kaneez Surka, Abish Mathew, Kanan Gill, and many more.

Gunjan, the CEO has been instrumental in building OML’s global creator network that operates across 20+ countries and 400+ creators.

With its roots in artist representation, OML’s operations today include a prolific and award-winning content studio that packages and produces shows for OTT platforms, live events production and a global brand solutions business.

Gunjan is an alumnus of the School of Communications and the School of Visual Arts at Emerson College in Boston, with further education from Harvard Business School.

Some excerpts from the interview:

1) Tell us about your early years and family life.
I was born into an entrepreneurial family, and was surrounded by business conversations growing up. There was also a keen sense of aesthetic, and I give both my parents credit for that. That is what shaped my interest in the field of design and marketing. My parents were really supportive and that’s how I made it to Emerson in Boston. I started working at the age of 16, because I wanted to be independent and decide for myself. I went for a flexible program, and I ended up doing a double Majors is New Media and Marketing Communications. That’s something I was really grateful for because I got a chance to pick my own Majors at an early age. After that, I started working at an ad agency in Boston, and also took evening classes at Harvard Business School. Since I was one of the first women from my family to have gone abroad to study, it wasn’t accepted very well, and after a year, I relocated to India.

2) What are the top lessons in brand management according to you?
Brand management works at the product level, and helps businesses derive value for all their stakeholders. Knowing what people want from the brand, and also what the brand can provide in terms of value to others goes a long way in brand management.

3) What are some of the benefits, and also disadvantages of taking live events online?
We obviously miss being on ground. Earlier, during concerts like the NH7 Weekender, people would choose where to go when there were three different performances happening at the same time, and now, since it has moved online, we have to allow people to toggle between different performances. The second thing is giving the people a sense of community because they enjoy going to festivals with other people. Crowd watching is a big part of on ground events, and we have provided different features like the Spotlight Feature, the Chat Feature, the Private Party Feature which allows people to experience a sense of community.

4) How do you preserve the startup culture in your organization while scaling up, while preserving the creativity and innovation focus?
We always need to make sure we’re at our creative best, especially because the media landscape itself evolves so quickly. One of the biggest things we’ve learnt is that while startups struggle with scale, it’s the more established companies that struggle with speed. For us, speed is something we’ve always valued. This is what has allowed us to flip so quickly into an online platform. Now, we’re hoping to do this for audiences globally. It’s about making sure our teams have what they need in order to deliver, while also looking out for their growth as well.

We would like to thank Gunjan for her valuable insights into the world of brand management and entrepreneurship.

Missed out on the previous house of expert episodes? You can watch them here

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