In 2011, Nikkhil Advani convinced his partners, Monisha Advani and Madhu Bhojwani to join hands to form a content production company. He enticed them by saying that a producer’s job is lightweight lifting. Today their company, Emmay Entertainment, has an enviable body of work across film and web series, many runaway successes, some even achieving cult status. It has one of the largest slates of original fictional content across formats, in the subcontinent and an organic bandwidth to keep expanding this capacity.
Madhu Bhojwani explains “Initially we gained hands-on experience in running end to end productions. We soon learnt that the shock absorbers to ensure business continuity despite the possibility of a bad day at the box office could be achieved by building scale. This empowers a commerce-driven approach where financial discipline keeps cash flows in check and ensures we come back to work with our teams Monday to Monday.”
Adds Monisha Advani “Anticipating the advent of the digital economy, we consciously diversified to develop web-based content. Audiences interact with characters and stories through information available at their fingertips to test the veracity and source of what they see. Did this character really exist? Is this fashion label available to me? Did this event really happen in history? These are real time questions that get answered and the more we trigger such interactivity through our stories, the more we engage and retain attention.”
Emmay’s creative lead Nikkhil Advani says quietly “The best is yet to come. We remind ourselves to stay humble and focus on building succession-planning, making all this last beyond us. The company will continue to attract best-in-class and untried talent. Our business decisions will always be audience-led.”
Currently self-funded and held between the three partners, Emmay is in conversations to raise institutional funds through dilution of equity. The intention is to invest in further scale, as well as post-production capabilities which would add another revenue stream to the company.
From DDay, Airlift, Satyameva Jayate, Batla House, Baazaar, The Empire, Mumbai Diaries, Rocket Boys, and more, the road ahead promises to be anything but light-weight lifting.