Sunil Vishnu, Co-founder, Evam entertainment

‘evam’ entertainment Pvt. Ltd. is an entertainment entrepreneurship with ‘happiness’ as its core offering , the core medium being 'theatre'. Founded in 2003 by two 26-year-old graduates from Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) – Sunil Vishnu K. and Karthik Kumar, ‘evam’ today is a 5 years young thriving business with a turnover of 1.2 Cr. in 2008-09!After being featured as CNBC ‘Young Turks’ in 2007, evam was among the top 25 Pepsi MTV ‘Youth Icons’ 2008 and also made it to the Top 30 finalists of Tata-NEN Hottest Start ups, 2008. In June, 2009 Sunil Vishnu K. also became the India Finalist for the Young Performing Arts Entrepreneur Award given by the British Council. Sunil represented India at the International Performing Arts conference in Edinburgh. To find out more about the Young Performing Arts Entrepreneur Award click here. To follow British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur Award on Facebook click here.

History of evam:

It all began when Karthik Kumar, a Chemical Engineer from Chennai and Sunil Vishnu K. a B.Com. graduate from Bhopal landed up at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) for an MBA in Marketing Communications. Their passion for theatre soon brought them together and they started off a number of theatre activities including reviving MICA’s theatre group ‘Sankalp’. When the time came to do their thesis, both Sunil and Karthik defied convention by doing a joint thesis on the feasibility of an entertainment company with theatre as the core offering.

They traveled across India meeting theatre and film personalities who all told them that it wouldn’t work. Karthik and Sunil were not daunted however. They parted for two years and took up corporate jobs to make up their capital, and in 2003 they both quit their jobs and moved to Chennai to start ‘evam’.

What started in one room in Karthik’s parents’ house, with one computer and one mattress is now an entertainment company, a Pvt. Ltd with a corporate office, full-time employees and a strong belief that “You Are Your Dream”!!!

What is your take on creative entrepreneurship?

In an ideal world there will be artists and creative people on one hand, entrepreneurs on the other and the two will come together to create sustainable businesses based on art, but in the current scenario artists are left to fend for themselves. So it is very important for artists to realize the importance of developing the right business skills to turn their passion into a profession. We the founders at evam were involved in Theatre before we met at MICA, the management education there definitely helped us to startup and run our own business.

What were the circumstances that led to the birth of evam?

We were part of the theatre group “Sankalp” at MICA and we successfully staged three plays. Not only did we put together the creative aspects needed we also had to work on the other aspects like marketing, sponsorship and logistics. This was a great learning experience and at the end of it we realized that we had revived and sustained a brand which although based on creativity, was a successful business venture. Based on this experience we had to do a thesis as part of our course.

We chose a topic which was based on creating a business enterprise which will have theatre as its core product. As part of this we met film makers, event managers, production houses and artists across 12 cities. We interacted with them and told them about our idea and got feedback from them. The notion was that it is very difficult to build a profitable enterprise based on theatre in India. But we had faith in our idea and wanted to change the way things were being done, so decided to go ahead with our plan anyway. We saw a business opportunity where everybody saw none and refused to be discouraged by past accounts of failures in this sector.

After MICA me and Karthik worked for 2 years and we had the seed capital of 2 lakh rupees we setup base in Chennai and started evam, what started from 2 lakh is today having a turnover of 3.5 crore. So I guess we were right about our idea after all.

What was the idea behind the name evam?

The first play me and Karthik did at Mica was called “Evam Indrajit”. The play was about how you can choose to follow a herd and become one among many or go ahead, question the norm and do something on your own, we were both very inspired by this and decided that this will be the name of the brand we create. Even when it comes to running evam we do not want to stick to one medium or genre and want to explore different things and come up with innovative things to do.

Can you tell us more about what are things you undertake at evam?

Live Theatre Shows, Happy Factory Corporate Shows, HR training modules, Student Interactions and Internal Forums and Discussions. We also help and organize festivals involving performance arts. We also have programs where in we help other creative people to pursue their passion

What are your future plans for evam?

We plan to have a platform for people interested in films and we are creating a platform for any live performing art. Through this we want to encourage other creative people to take up their interest as a profession.

How was your experience with Young Performing Arts Entrepreneur Award?

It was a phenomenal experience; I got to meet many performance arts entrepreneurs and not just artists. These are the people who could collaborate for various projects. Once I when to UK through this I got an insight how things work there and how theatre has evolved so much and enjoys encouragement from the people as well as the government.

I had a lot of learning about how theatre in the UK is community driven; it was about involving people in the community and making theatre a part of the local community. We were inspired by this and once back we were involved in Airtel Theatricals.

YourStory wishes Evam and its team all the very best in spreading happiness and to catch a play at a theatre near you log on to http://www.evam.co.in/home.htm

To read about the stories of other creative entrepreneurs who have been a part of the Young Creative Entrepreneur Award click here.