All the way back in 2015-16, Tanish Thakker began working on an incubation programme that came to fruition last year as a pilot project but was officially launched last month. “Coming from a start-up incubator and venture capitalist background, I saw how incubation programmes impact overall growth of the start-up ecosystem. Then I realised that no one was doing this for the independent music landscape in India,” says Thakker,  the founder of Amplify Music India (AMI) and director of the music agency Gatecrash. Gatecrash is a Mumbai-based music agency founded by  Emmanuelle De Decker. The artist development project helps artistes across different genres develop their business, enhance creativity and build social networks in the music industry. It helps them marry their artistic vision to entrepreneurial and personal development.

“The indie music scene in India,” says Thakker, “focuses on getting more shows for musicians, managing a particular artiste, but no one looks at it from an overall development perspective.” In a landscape where most artistes follow the DIY approach, before a label or management agency takes over, they need to look at their work as a business, and themselves, as an entrepreneur.