Roshan Cariappa runs Bharatvaarta. He was the first person willing to bet on us.
We shot for him on the 24th of november 2024, which was also the day I turned nineteen.
The podcast was twenty seven thousand rupees. After everything, I made two thousand.
I went for a family dinner that night and spent the entire two thousand there.
I have made a lot more money since and none of it has felt like that.
The guest that day was Saurabh Mukherjea, who founded Marcellus. It was the first time I had directed anything rather than shot or cut it. At the end he told me it was the best directed podcast he had ever been in, and that the future was mine.
I was nineteen years old and about six hours into being a director.
The second one was Amish Tripathi, in Mumbai. We have done a lot of them since. Over a hundred conversations on that show now, and we built its entire visual identity from nothing.
Bharatvaarta is not built for views. It is long, difficult conversations about Indian politics and policy and culture, taken seriously, with people like vikram sood and manish sabharwal sitting across the table. That is a hard show to make and a harder one to fund. We are still grateful he lets us near it.
A lot of our clients came through Roshan. He did not have to do any of that.
He is the closest thing I have to a mentor in this industry. At events he would pull me aside and explain what was actually happening in the room. Why that person was saying that. What they wanted. Things you cannot look up.