All the world’s a stage, wrote William Shakespeare. While we all have certain roles to play during our lifetime, there are a few who take it up as a profession to entertain the rest of us. From giant silver screens to the handy mobile phones and Virtual Reality box, and theaters to the Over-the-top Platforms, the Media and Entertainment industry has evolved tremendously. This has given rise to opportunities for every artistic soul and there are a few who are busy providing these souls a platform to embody.
Life70mm Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, headed by Samir Manoj Yadav is one young and bubbling startup that is working methodically so that no artist remains hidden. Samir always wanted to work in the Media & Entertainment Industry and finally started his career back in 2012 as an event coordinator. He always kept looking for new opportunities and soon realized that Freelance Artist Market is a huge unorganized sector. A quick study into it and he became certain that he would like to tap the “Freelance Artist Segment” and thus created the YoArtist platform under his company.
At YoArtist, Samir’s goal is to make the largest platform for Freelance Artists and make them more Presentable, Affordable, Accessible and Experiential across the globe. To know more about it, we got in touch with the man himself.
Tell us more about the YoArtist Platform launched by Life70mm.
The platform simplifies the discovery and profile showcase process by engaging new & established Artists (across fields of acting, music, script writing, direction, dancing, makeup, anchoring, etc) to showcase their talent and grab the best opportunities in the entertainment industry through our App and Website.
Whether you’re an Artist, Event Organizer, Casting Director, Entertainment Manager, Producer, Director, or Service Provider, this one-stop destination has unique solutions for all your needs. Showcase your art and services to offer, stay up to date with industry news and put forth real-time requirements and Bookings. YoArtist is also open for event organizers where there is a need for freelancers and new artists.
YoArtist is an open aggregator platform for Creators of creative video & audio content, scripts and other production ideas from Different domain. By just sharing a simple online brief and Profile Video, one can create an account to showcase their Talent.
What were the challenges you came across during the inception of your startup?
One of the major challenges was to get the right core team – Something very essential when you are starting up. Besides this, we also didn’t know about the actual market sizing of this segment and didn’t have a website initially and had to pitch our offerings to several of our Industry people and Artists to make them understand about what exactly we want to do with this platform, which made it quite
exacting. Resource and time allocation also proved to be a challenge. Because we wanted to grow as fast as we can to take a leap in this segment as First Mover, we didn’t want to do too much or go too slow on anything during the development stage. The initial 6 months, from concept to roll-out, was a very interesting yet challenging period for us.
Is your company bootstrapped or have you received funding or do you plan on approaching Investors?
We are seed funded. However, we are looking at raising funds this year so that beyond the first six months, we do not have to worry and achieve our projected vision for the next 3 years and roadmap without any obstacle.
As the founder/CEO, what is your opinion on the current landscape of startup culture in India?
I believe it is the best it has ever been – The number of startups and the pace at which we see them scale from 0 to 100 is tremendous. In fact, it is something that the Indian startup ecosystem hadn’t seen much in the past. We are the 3rd largest startup ecosystem in the world after the USA & China. Having said that, there is a need for more individuals to step up, take risks and go all out for what they believe in. As a nation, we need to be more willing to take risks as it is a quality that does not come naturally to a lot of Indians. Now a days in India, lots of corporate houses, business personalities and even Government is coming one step forward to support the ecosystem at its best of the possibilities.
According to you, how important is it to be updated with technology as per your industry sector
Technology is the new Oxygen in the ecosystem, it’s tremendously important. For that matter, in today’s world, you can’t ignore technology no matter which sector you are in. For us, the entire process, from planning an event or campaign to consuming content to sharing reviews and more, has changed due to the infusion of technology. And now, with the enforced New Normal scenario, technology is something which is going to be one of the only sustainable tools for survival.
How do you strategies on scaling your company in the future?
We are very excited about our growth plan of penetrating other markets this year. Besides this, we have been seeing tremendous opportunities and growth in not just the metros and Tier-1 cities but a lot of other small towns across the country as well. We would be taking more than 50-60k partner engagement activities in order to make our platform a more close-knit one for our members and to provide them with more opportunities to explore the best talent at the best prices.
In the next 2-3 years, we’ll expand our services towards some different segments of the same industry that we are in right now, eg. Music, Studios, Productions, Chat Shows, Travel Shows, and Magazines etc.
