A brother duo rallies a team of IIT and NIT alumni, comes up with an upbeat, inspirational music video

"There is no passion to be found playing small--in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." - Nelson Mandela

After discovering that their father could not pursue his songwriting dream, two brothers (Ashutosh and Anurag) decided to make the dream their own. Their first challenge was to get out of their small town and elevate themselves from their modest background. Their passion drove them to study in prestigious colleges (IIT and NIT, respectively). Working on jobs, setting up ventures, traveling around, they kept exploring music and dance.

Ashutosh (an IIT Kharagpur alumnus) started his first venture in 2008. It was incubated by The Morpheus. The venture was about creating technology solutions for real estate professionals and was moderately successful. With the experience of setting up a venture, Ashutosh enhanced his abilities to manage risks, innovate, and get the best out of teams.

Anurag (a NIT Warangal alumnus), on the other hand, went on to study contemporary dance on a full time basis. He also got involved in managing a performing arts venture. After adding several dance forms to his repertoire, he moved on to study acting, and even learnt film production.

Ashutosh had been a part of music bands since college days, but he had no formal music training. So, it took some time before he could start composing. He started with creating background scores for his brother's dance musical productions. At this stage, composing music to recording to producing commercial quality music - everything was a challenge for him.

It took several years for the duo to understand the entire music/dance/film production process, and to build a team. Finally, Purplehed was conceived.

Purplehed’s first music video - Feel the Passion - is meant to inspire. It is the story of each one of us – a story that eggs people on to pursue what they truly believe in, and live the life that they are meant to live. A story that aims to instill the belief that following one’s passion will lead to limitless possibilities and memorable experiences. Feel the Passion conveys the message that listening to one’s heart is the ultimate bliss.

The song interweaves realistic stories of four diverse characters, each of whom are in the quest of realizing their hopes and ambitions. The one thread that binds them all is their passion to push themselves to follow their aspirations. The lyrics embody their belief in ‘living in the moment’ and their will to embark on the uncertain, yet full of possibilities, path of their dreams.

The song also features Shilpa Singh, who was Miss Universe - India, 2012. Feel the Passion has been directed by Biswanath Rath (a NIT alumnus and Founder of BnR Films) and choreographed by Anurag and Krupa Shah, who also feature in the song. The post production has been done by Jackson Garg (an IIT alumnus).

During the post-production phase, Ashutosh was away travelling for a week. Meanwhile, the post production data grew beyond the storage limit of the backup hard drive. Before he could arrange for a new backup drive, the original drive took a fall and was left unrecoverable. All the work was lost. “That was a difficult time for the whole team and, of course, for me as a Producer. The incident adversely affected the team morale; and so also the project timelines and cost. However, it was a great effort from everyone to dig deep and start all over from scratch,” said Ashutosh, describing the painful incident.

Performing arts, such as music and dance, have always been a passion for these two. The journey of these brothers with Purplehed has been all about leveraging their entrepreneurship and team building skills to set up a venture out of their art. Purplehed wants to explore diverse music and dance art forms with the aim of inspiring people to play big; to live a life they are capable of living.

Ashutosh’s advice to fellow entrepreneurs:

Creating something new is a time-consuming process and requires tremendous faith and perseverance. The process may entail a lot of iterations. So, it becomes important to choose something one is passionate about. If one enjoys the process, it becomes easier to get through the countless failures before the eventual success.