Samir Gupta

Samir Gupta has over 14 years of experience in the Indian Media and Entertainment Industry across the corporate, creative, marketing and financial aspects of this sector.

He is the Managing Director and Founder of Cinema Capital Advisory, the Management Company which set up Cinema Capital Venture Fund (CCVF), India’s largest domestic Venture Capital Fund in the Film and Media Entertainment sector.

Apart from funding and producing mainstream Studio fare in Bollywood, Samir is also active in setting up and creating platforms for supporting and developing newer creative talent across the film industry. In 2007 he helped launch IIFW (Indian Independent Filmmakers Worldwide) , a not for profit organisation with more than 200 filmmakers, writers, actors and producers as its members. IIFW provides a platform for this new and emerging talent to thrive and get the proper guidance and focus to succeed in the Film industry and serves on its Executive Committee and is a a founder member of this fast growing initiative which has organised various events and platforms for globally renowned filmmakers like Danny Boyle, Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur to interact with new and emerging filmmakers in workshops like ‘Master Class’.

He is also a member of the Film Producers Guild which is the premier body for the leading Film producers and corporate studios in the Indian Film Industry.

Prior to launching Cinema Capital Samir was the CEO and Managing Director for FBC Media (2004-2008) and helped launch them in India in 2004. FBC Media was the Indian subsidiary of the London and Rome based media group FBC which specialized in Strategic Communications, Branded Content, Distribution, syndication and television production across 30 countries.

While heading FBC India’s TV division Samir produced a bunch of reality television shows across India’s leading broadcasters like Star, Sony and National Geographic. The biggest of these being Lakme Fashion House, India’s first and largest Fashion reality television show till date with a production budget of close to 2 million USD in 2005. The grand finale show was judged by Donatella Versace on her maiden trip to India.

Before getting FBC Media to India Samir’s own Film and television Production company called Impact Films founded in 2000, produced the Award winning Indie film ‘Waisa Bhi Hota hai’ (2003). The film also had one of the biggest selling soundtracks that year with the Sufi anthem song ‘Allah Ke Bande’ by the artist Kailash Kher who made his debut with this film. The film won critical acclaim internationally and won the Florence Film Festival Award for Best Popular Film voted by the audience.

Sanjay Bhattacharji

Sanjay Bhattacharji is one of the senior most Media and Entertainment Industry's management gurus.He has had an illustrious career for over 11 years with UTV helping build them into one of India's most valuable Media and Entertainment Groups. As the former COO of UTV Motion Pictures, he helped launch their film business from scratch and was one of the pioneers of doing co-production with film actors when he did Chalte Chalte with Shah Rukh Khan. Today UTV is among the largest and most valuable motion picture studios in the business. His Filmography in terms of business and production execution includes films like Hyderabad Blues, Lagaan, Swades, Fiza, Lakshya, Chalte Chalte, Mission Kashmir, Hera Pheri, Bade Miya, Chote Miya, Shikhar etc. Post his UTV stint he became an independent consultant for major Media and Entertainment companies and has consulted for the Inox Group of companies, one of the fastest growing multiplex theater chains and Pixion post production studios amongst others.

Mohit Mehra

Mohit Mehra has been in the Media and Entertainment business for 14 years as a professional. He started his career in Advertising and has worked with companies like Enterprise Nexus and Ambience. He shifted to the media and entertainment business when he moved to Head Marketing for Channel [V] owned by Star group. Apart from this he successfully launched Ten Sports India's number one sports channel. Films beckoned and he moved on to Nimbus Communications where he set up the film marketing and distribution division and handled their first feature film project Sarhad Paar starring Sanjay Dutt. Post Nimbus, he moved to UTV Motion Pictures in early 2006 to develop feature projects in the Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Animation space. He then left UTV and joined Adlabs in early 2007 to become the Business Head of Home Productions, Adlabs Films. During his stint he oversaw the production and release of their maiden home production release Johnny Gaddaar. Mohit has also dabbled in theater and won the Brand Equity Quiz in 1999.