Rajesh Butta: We Are Based in Mumbai Which Is One of the Biggest Film Making Hubs in the Country

Rajesh Butta of Filmboard Movie Technologies Inc..

Tell us about yourself?

A serial entrepreneur, currently Founder of a B2B marketplace startup in the audio-visual content creation space. Check out www.filmboardmovies.com

What lessons has being an entrepreneur taught you? 

There are many lessons one learns in any journey of life. Entrepreneurship teaches you to be mentally tough, be nimble footed to adapt to changes, be methodical, organized and be prepared to fall several times before getting back up fast. Perseverance always pays off in the end.

If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

One key advice I would give is first to choose your co-founder carefully. An improver partner is suicidal. Secondly, sacrifice short term benefits in favour of long term gains.

A lot of entrepreneurs find it difficult to balance their work and personal lives. How have you found that?

Entrepreneurship comes from passion to achieve something or solve something or bringing about a major change in a particular sphere.

Therefore entrepreneurs do get too much occupied with work, especially during the initial period, thus some balance is bound to get disturbed. The key is to develop buy-in from family members by exposing them to the challenges you are trying to overcome.

This also develops deeper bond in personal lives. Secondly, make best use of breaks in between work and spending quality time with family. And lastly, always keep in mind that work can never finish, it has to be wound up to be carried forward to the next day and winding up is in your own hands.

Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?

The company was started by 2 batchmates from BITS Pilani, with one of them a celebrated filmmaker and therefore deep exposure in the domain.

The pain points being solved are the ones first hand experienced by the founders. Filmboard has launched the world’s first B2B marketplace platform for film related resources enabling discovery, transparency and convenience.

What do you think is your magic sauce? What sets you apart from the competitors?

It is the complementary skills in the founding team, with deep knowledge of the domain and technology that sets us apart.

Also, we are attaching the non-glamourous part of film making which is film production that doesn’t attract any attention although it constitutes 60-70% of the budget of film making.

How have you found sales so far? Do you have any lessons you could pass on to other founders in the same market as you just starting out?

Since the venture disrupts an industry that has been functioning in an archaic manner since many decades, getting them around to try and work with us is quite a challenge.

And that is where the experience of many years and domain knowledge helps.

Making sure we are not stepping on anyone’s shoes and making everyone a collaborator in the journey rather than adversary is the piece of advice I would like to give to fellow founders.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in your business, and how did you overcome it?

Challenges are part of any entrepreneurial journey and are always ongoing. One has to be at it all the time.

What do you consider are the main strengths of operating your business in India and the specific state you are in over other states in India?

Main strength of operating in India is because it is the second biggest market globally. In India, we are based in Mumbai which is one of the biggest film making hubs in the country. Once this is cracked properly, the entry in other geographies becomes easier.

What (if any) are some weaknesses of operating your business within India and your state?

One the most important weaknesses is the domain itself. The investor community doesn’t have much knowledge about it and being a pioneer, it becomes difficult from fund-raising point of view.

If you could operate your business in another state in India rather than the State you are in, which state would it be and why?

We have to move to other regional film making industries anyways. So, we are looking at the southern film industry actively next including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam & Kannada markets and gradually capture the Bengali, Punjabi and Bhojpuri film industries.

India has an incredibly diverse population. How has the affected your consumer base and business?

Not just India has a diverse population, the film making business itself involves a whole lot of different skills right from writers to actors to musicians to cameramen and technicians and also the spot boys and location providers.

Each of these have very different profile and demography. Over the period, we have developed expertise in tackling these diverse set of people.

Infrastructure is really important to businesses. How have you seen India’s infrastructure improve recently? Do you see new opportunities opening up?

India offers to be a wonderful destination for film shoots given that it has diverse locations and multiple weather conditions to offer a variety of options.

Currently, the industry is unorganized and chaotic in many ways. But at the same time there is huge focus from the Government to provide single window clearance and therefore promote film productions across India since this has huge impact on the tourism business.

With Filmboard in the mix, it becomes so much easier for producers across the globe to work in India. Therefore more and more fresh capital is going to open the industry further.

What do you want to accomplish in the next 5 years with your business?

We want that any film project shot in India to source atleast one resource from Filmboard in the next 5 years. We want to be the ‘first port of call’ when it comes to Film making.

And finally, if people want to get involved and learn more about your business, how should they do that?

Since ours is a services business, the Governmental support is quite the reverse. There are lots of rebates and concessions being offered by various states and central government to promote film tourism. Therefore, the impact is quite on the ‘positive’ side for us.

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