MUMBAI: Dhruv Sheth joined OML, a global artist-first media and entertainment company as a production intern for the David Guetta concerts in 2012, and has steadily risen through the ranks. Now, as chief operating officer of the agency that has been delivering content across genres for OTT platforms, television and brands along with live entertainment properties, Sheth oversees the content division, the integrated creator and artist management team, and finance and legal divisions of the company, while bringing organisational efficiencies across business operations
Amongst the shows he helped build at OML are AIB’s roast show- Knockout, Comicstaan, One Mic Stand, Pushpavalli, Laakhon Mein Ek, and Chacha Vidhayak Hai Humare; the company also has 83 artists on its rosters, including big names from the stand-up comedy scene like Zakir Khan, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Ashish Shakya, Dolly Singh, Ankush Bahuguna, and Tanmay Bhat. Having already produced over 200 hours of content for multiple digital platforms in the last couple of years, he has an interesting line-up of content-led shows coming up next year.
Indiantelevision.com’s Shikha Singh caught up with OML Entertainment COO Dhruv Sheth to talk about the journey, challenges posed by the recent crises, upcoming projects and the way forward for the entertainment agency.
Edited Excerpts:
On working during pandemic
Earlier, we were just a live event company which created intellectual property for the brand and ourselves. But four years ago, we diversified our business and started working with a lot of brands, content managers, writers, directors, stand-up comedians, and artists. During these tough times, we've been able to increase our revenues and branded content. The demand for content has not gone down, the consumption has just skyrocketed and now telecom partners offering bundle deals of subscriptions has in fact benefited our company.
Just like everybody else, we also had a tough time but we've not been to a financially unhealthy point because we performed well in the previous years. There were no layoffs or salary deductions in my company.
I took over the role of COO in December 2019 and then in March 2020 the pandemic hit the country. So with the help of our CEO Gunjan Aryan I got a crash course in company management. Although it was a bit challenging, being committed to the well-being of employees has pushed us to do better.
On targeting international markets
The company also has an agency business named Global Creator Network (GCN) where we help brands create branded content with creators across 26 countries in the world. Our job is to find the most relevant content creator in that region and then collaborate with them to create a branded video for the brand. We aim at collaborating with artists at a global scale. We act as a surrogate and that's how we're now expanding and getting more and more brands.
On the closure of physical markets impacting the business
June onwards we started doing digitally live shows, surprisingly, it did really well. However, it was just five to ten per cent of what we usually do but after October, a lot of corporates have realised that they have no way to do corporate engagement. Slowly, we started getting bookings for these corporate shows. We are almost at 30 to 40 per cent of what we used to do before. Most of the business is coming from the international market. All of our comedians including Zakir Khan, Biswa, and Kanan Gill covered 40 cities across the world last year. Now the Dubai market is slowly opening up, so will do some shows over there. But I think by the end of 2021, we should be back to normal. In the meantime, we are relying on these digital shows for the artists to at least make money. We did a digital version of most of our comedy festivals; obviously the attendance is not as much as it used to be in live events but we've been able to keep our brands alive.
On upcoming shows
We've done 45 stand-up shows for Amazon Prime and Netflix, which is the highest number of productions of all channels in the country by a mile. We did Comicstaan on Amazon Prime, which is one of our flagship non-fiction property. We will be shooting season three of it in the next month.
Currently, we are shooting the second season of One Mic Stand. We have also done a massive non-fiction show for another platform, the name I cannot reveal now due to confidentiality. But hopefully, that should come out in the next two months. With Amazon Prime we have done close to 10 shows. Other than that we have done programmes with Disney + Hotstar, MX Player and Zee5.
On content distribution
As we manage so many comedians, whatever videos they create are represented by OML. Our company syndicates that content with brands across the world including in-flight, hotels, and several other outlets. Any new platform in India is a great customer for us. Spice Mobile, Ola cabs, Tata Sky also have our content.
Regional is another big market for us. We actually have development executives who particularly look after that market. The streaming giants are also bullish about the regional content now they have full-fledged regional teams. We have started with the Comistaan Tamil and some Kannada programmes but gradually with time, the company will explore the rest of the regional space.
On its legacy clients
Our clientele includes Bacardi, Redbull, Levis, Mondelez, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Tinder, Bumble, OK Cupid, Cred, YouTube and Zomato. We do tentpole properties for all the brands. Luckily, we were able to co-create content that lasted for years.
On the future of talent management company
This year the level of enthusiasm by the creators, employees, and clients has increased. 2021 is going to be a big year for us because a lot of things are pending from last year which will happen in a bigger fashion this year. We are looking at new models of monetisation and distribution due to the boom of the digital space in India. From the commission point of view, we are planning to increase another 50 hours of content. As of now we have 30 shows in the pipeline, hopefully we will add 60 other shows by the end of the year.
