Founder of Kwan, Anirban Blah, talks about the Gigstart takeover

Gigstart was the pioneer of a novel concept to provide a platform to a plethora of entertainment talent found across the country and consumers who are looking to curate events themselves. An online marketplace that facilitates swift and transparent connections between entertainers and event and party planners, Gigstart verifies and reviews all the artists before listing them on the site.

Now, with the network of KWAN’s vast experience behind Gigstart, the partnership is poised to deliver a unique process of event planning that empowers consumers to customize events as per their specific requirements.

The motive

Kwan is a media company with a wide portfolio of entertainment investment and possesses the strength to help creative talent reach out to consumers in interesting ways. Gigstart seemed a natural fit for KWAN’s portfolio of companies with the intrinsic profitability of the business it promises.

Artist management

The biggest gap in the entertainment industry today is deemed to be the transparency of inflow of financial information, reliability in terms of delivery and some sort of public feedback mechanism. All three combined, it implies that there is no marketplace for talent today. Gigstart is the first marketplace for such a sector in India. Every single KWAN artist as well as talent from other agencies will be featured on Gigstart to do justice to the expanse of talent the agency hosts, Blah promised.

The Company also announced the launch of a highly user-friendly mobile app, which will further provide easy access to the various entertainment options, guiding party planners to the best-suited artists and connecting them - concluding with payment services and contract formalities.

“I think using a mobile app is just another means of distribution. Whether it is through the mobile app or a website we will continue being a mobile first company, with the emerging data scenario in telecom. Yes, we already see an effect on the talent side, there is a huge amount of adoption of the mobile app,” said Blah.

The vision for Gigstart

With its large scale credibility and level of major national talent, Gigstart has already carved out a place for itself. It already has 20% of the seller-base that UrbanClap had. While there is talent scattered all over India from a singer in Raipur to the biggest Bollywood star, there is not enough scope for them to reach out to audiences without going through a succession of middle-men.

As Vijay Subramaniam, Founding Partner, Kwan said, “Gigstart is first of its kind dais to address this requirement and we hope to make it a home and community for talent in addition to building a sustainable business.”

“We see Gigstart as a vertically integrated platform for talent and ancillary services across multiple geographies and multiple languages,” Blah added, speaking of future plans for Gigstart.