StarClinch CEO Varun Agrawal
According to an EY report, the Indian Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector stood at a whopping Rs. 1.73 trillion (~US$ 23.7 billion) in 2021 but there haven't been many forward-looking businesses who have encased the deficits in the industry and built a fortune out of it.
Spearheaded by Varun Agrawal, CEO and founder, StarClinch, a Delhi-based artist finding and booking startup is displaying strong commitment for both client and artist centricity and has emerged as one of the stalwarts of streamlining this ecosystem.
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"Back in the days while I was working as an Investment Banker, I happened to sense the massive deficit between the promised deliverables of an artist and how they wouldn't align with the amount paid by the client or vice versa. This arrangement was mostly unorganized and arbitrary and would lead to exploitation of one amongst both the parties. That's when it occurred to me to build a platform that bridges this major gap in this ecosystem. I quit my job in 2014 because I had faith in this idea, and since then we've focused on building a fool proof mechanism that has weathered the test of time", says Varun Agarwal, while speaking about the problem that triggered the idea of “StarClinch”.
"In an industry filled with amateurs, StarClinch is very professional and effective. The team is quick on their feets and does a decent job of bridging the gap between the artist and client. For artists to keep their money up until they perform as per client expectations with a third party would not have gone too well with many, had their team not been reliable. In such arrangements, the chances of conflicts and the less influential party getting deprived is really high, hence the need for such platforms is inevitable", says one of the comedian Kishore Dayani associated with them from the past 3+ years.
The startup ecosystem has snowballed into a space more than 61,000 firms eyeing to ensure long-term profitability today, hence along with finding a lacuna in the business, it is even more important to build and sustain a startup for the long haul, Varun expressed his views on building such businesses and said,
"I think the basic premise of it is to recognize a widespread problem and then being the best in designing that one solution. For us, the escrow idea, its testing and execution was the final nail in the coffin. The problem statement was the deviation in the promised quality at the end of both the parties, the client and the artist providing his services"
"We have stepped into being the moderators between the two parties. We are entrusted by the client with their money and with the assurance that they are not exposed to artists not turning up or performing as promised", added CEO Agarwal on their unique offering which makes their role inevitable.
The Covid-19 pandemic came as a jolt to the live entertainment industry, concerts, live shows were completely shunned and brought many businesses to a shutdown, however, StarClinch emerged out of this severity and has seen an upward trajectory since then, speaking on the same, CEO Varun says,"The next most important trait for any business should be fungibility. The pandemic hit the shows and offline events seemed like a dream for a long time. We had to quickly maneuver and adapt to be accessible digitally. Virtual events was a feasible and actionable step and since people were bored more than ever, we designed our system to meet that very need".
Having recently raised INR 1.75 crores in a seed round from Artha Venture Fund and Nitish Mittersain, founder and MD of Nazara Technologies, StarClinch is embellished by collaborations with some of the leading personalities in the entertainment industry such as Kangana Ranaut, Monali Thakur, Guru Randhawa, Falguni Pathak, apart from the 20,000+ artists registered with them.
To manage this multi-fold growth, StarClinch is actively and aggressively hiring from some of the most credible institutes in the country, keeping their solution-driven orientation in mind, they're hiring from IIT Delhi for some distinguished positions.
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