MUMBAI: Darshana Bhalla, former CEO of Mates – the entertainment unit of Madison Communication – and serial entrepreneur Radha Kapoor Khanna have launched a talent management firm – ‘DoIT Talent Ventures’.
The talent venture firm has the stated aim of “broadening the horizon” of talent management and development across genres.
Set up in April, DoIT Talent Ventures is a subsidiary of Ms Kapoor Khanna’s DoIT Creations – a flagship holding company of The Three Sisters: Institutional Office (TTS:IO), focused on establishing “new age creative businesses”.
TTS:IO through DoIT Creations has incubated ventures across education, media, entertainment, sports and retail. In sports, its better known properties are the Dabang Delhi franchise in Pro Kabaddi League and the Dabang Mumbai team in the Hockey India League (HIL has currently suspended operations).
DoIT Talent Ventures has been established as an integrated talent management firm which manages and promotes talent from the film, TV, sports and the culinary space and also plans to diversify into various other creative verticals such as music and arts in the long term.
In the three months since formation, DoIT Talent Ventures has roped in on its roster Virender Sehwag, Mahesh Bhupathi, Geeta Phogat, Ashwini Ponnappa, Robin Singh, Viren Rasquinha and Aparna Popat from the sports sector. While in entertainment, the brand has signed Farhan Akhtar, John Abraham, Lara Dutta, Kajal Aggarwal, Neeraj Pandey Samir Kochhar in Entertainment and Vicky Ratnani in Culinary.
Speaking on the occasion Ms Bhalla said: “Sports Sponsorship in India has grown tremendously in the last few years with a 14% growth in FY 17-18. With Indian athletes doing well internationally across sporting events, the appetite for brands to engage with sports-talent has grown. This growth complements the thought process and capabilities of Do IT Talent Ventures to optimise opportunities around the sports ecosystem. We believe that this trend will only grow in the coming months due to high impact sports events like the Asian Games.”
Ms Kapoor Khanna added: “Under the holding company DoIT Creations, with a presence in entertainment, sports, media, retail amidst other consumer focused businesses, there was a natural fit for the group to establish a presence in the talent ecosystem wherein we have the unique advantage of unlocking synergies by leveraging our portfolio of new age creative ventures.”
Heading the sports vertical of the venture is former AVP, marketing, Sports Cluster, Sony Pictures Networks India; while the entertainment unit is lead by Priya Garodia Shah, who was with Ms Bhalla in Mates as V-P Celebrity Management & Solutions.
Queried as to whether there were any targets her venture had laid out from the get go, Ms Bhalla said the aim was to capture a 20% market share in the mid-term. Quite a challenging task all said and done, considering that there are already four well established players that dominate the space in Matrix, Kwaan, Cornerstone and Baseline; along with myriad smaller “boutique” firms all vying to make their presence felt.
