MUMBAI: With the general entertainment genre getting hyper-competitive, the demand for out of the box content is exploding. And nobody understands the needs of a channel's creative and executive producers than somebody who has worked there before.
Hence, it is no surprise that executives from channels are leaving their relatively comfortable jobs to turn entrepreneurs or partnering with producers as creative producers. Saurabh Tewari (Nautanki Films, Colors), Ranjeet Thakur, Hemant Ruparel (Frames, formerly with Zee TV), Bimal Unnikrishnan (India Dancing Superstar), Siddhartha Tewari and Vikas Seth (formerly with Sony). The latest to do so is Vaibhav Modi, formerly with Endemol and later Star Plus as non-fiction programming head.
He put in his papers in September 2012, and set up his own production house calling it Bolt Media. His initiative is being funded by Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms and hence it is being talked about as its subsidiary. Modi has taken along with him an old Star hand Rajkamal Patra as commercial head and has hired a team of creatives, production professionals and writers on a project basis.
The production house has already wrapped up eight ad films for Kissan which were aired in March 2013 and featured Punar Vivah's Kratika Sengar. Now it is working on two fiction shows one of which is in the mythological genre and the other in the historical documentary drama space
Modi is loath to reveal any further details on the shows. All he was willing to say was that "Bolt Media was incorporated to independently create and produce cutting edge TV concepts across mainstream and regional television. We will be covering genres like youth, humour, neomythology, reality, scripted reality, factual entertainment besides exploring branded content like digital brand solutions and short form programming. We are also looking at creating intellectual property like TV formats, events and digital content. "
Going by how other TV-broadcast-executives-turned-entrepreneurs have fared in the past, expect Modi to notch up success.
