Talent agents or media moguls?

Just like their American counterparts, Indian talent agencies are morphing into quasi-media firms. Can it work?

Earlier this year Spice, which handles branding for stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Mahesh Babu, entered into a joint venture with Reliance to form Entropy, a digital marketing firm. Kwan Entertainment, which represents 150 celebrities across sports and entertainment including Bhuvan Bam, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone, helped seed Saavn and (the now dissolved) Phantom Films. In 2015, it launched a music production firm (Studio J.A.M.8) with composer Pritam, whom the firm manages. Last month, it launched a Literature( because it is a brand name for the new service)  team or LIT team through its southern joint venture Kwan South to “generate the best content and to help good content find its audience,” says an official release. Tulsea, arguably, India’s largest talent agency for writer/directors, routinely puts financers and producers together. 

As talent management agencies morph into quasi-media firms, should studios and broadcasters start getting worried? Maybe not. To understand why, here is a quick flashback. 

So far talent management firms such as Kwan, Bling, Matrix and others have done a wonderful job of bringing order and method to a very amorphous part of India’s booming but chaotic entertainment industry — its creative talent. Remember, in the last decade alone, the film industry has grown over 60 per cent and broadcasting over 300 per cent in revenues. As a result, the demand for talent is estimated to have gone up 200-300 times. But even while studios were organising the production end and multiplexes the retail end, the supply of talent remained hopelessly disorganised. That is till talent agencies started coming up in the early part of the millennium. 

The first thing that Tulsea, Kwan, Matrix do is sieve through the deluge of talent coming in, nurture it and match it with the right story, studio or project. This involves an array of things that star mothers, secretaries or assistants did earlier. These could be hawking a script across production houses, putting together writers’ rooms, brand and endorsement deals and most importantly, a benchmark for the cost and the price of talent. Most writers say that with an agency, the money can be anywhere between 50-100 per cent more than what they can negotiate individually. Also, there are lawyers and other people handling stuff that most actors, directors or writers are not familiar with. The idea is to let creative people focus on what they do best — creation.  

Kwan had a role to play in 50 films, 60 television shows and 20 web series in 2017. It curated 1,500 live performances and established 2,500 partnerships between brands and people in the sports/entertainment ecosystem. It owns both the raw talent and the means/platform to showcase it. “I want to be the B2B Amazon (Business-to-Business Amazon) of Indian film, entertainment, music, comedy, sports,” says Anirban Das Blah, founder, Kwan. Does that bring Kwan in conflict with clients? “We will not get into long form content because studios, Netflix et al are my most important buyers, so there is inherent conflict. In consumer retail or short form content (jingles, branded content) there is no conflict,” says Blah. 

Most agency heads point to the US where William Morris Endeavour (WME)-IMG or Creative Artists Agency (CAA) dominate the creative ecosystem. WME, arguably the biggest, has interests in several media firms, digital ad firms and in its biggest move ever, acquired sports management firm IMG in 2013. “WME or CAA is in a developed economy where all factors are stable — studio power and internal democracy is ingrained. We are still evolving. Our star system is feudal,” says Prabhat Choudhary, founder, Spice. He has a point. Studios in India are not yet comfortable with the idea of dealing with agencies — most writers, directors and actors admit to awkward moments in first meetings if there is a manager in tow. 

Think about it. About 15 years back, nobody thought anyone would pay a talent agency to get a writer or director — now they do. Their expansion into other areas, whether in conflict or not, then is simply another step in the evolution of India’s entertainment ecosystem. 

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