Launch of App & Web Portal – Call Bollywood.
The Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ campaign has taken a fillip with the common man taking interest in the digitization of services and products around him. Aimed at facilitating hiring for the entertainment industry Binoculars Media Pvt. Ltd. has launched an app and website by the name Call Bollywood. India has the largest film industry and the third largest television industry in the world. It has a vibrant music sector, art and publishing industries and many more creative domains that are purely talent-driven. And in such a vast and growing talent-dependent market, there is a need of a talent aggregator that bridges the demand-supply gap. Actors, models, singers, dancers, bands, DJs, photographers, stylists and artists across a vast spectrum of categories can build, manage and promote their portfolios. The app allows them to get accessed by thousands of industry recruiters and get offers in real-time.
“Call Bollywood is likely to bridge the gap between the talent seekers and the talent and everyone will find the intuitive framework very useful. So far hiring in the media, entertainment, creative & art space has been exceptionally vibrant, and yet very unorganized and obsolete. In a way, the entertainment sector sees significantly higher recruitment activity than any other sector because unlike the corporate space where people get employed with a single organization for years, artists are very fast-moving and get employed only for a few days or weeks at a time depending on the nature of the project. This increases the overall hiring-velocity of the entire industry and every artist is engaged by not one but numerous recruiters in say one year’s time. The number of recruitment transactions we are talking about is unimaginable, especially when we take regional cinema, television, and advertising also into consideration. Given this diverse and intense hiring dynamics, the need for an organized and reliable online platform was very pronounced.” Said co-founder and ad-film and film producer Shekhar Gijare.
Call Bollywood not only helps talent register and showcase themselves but also helps the demand generators like production houses, creative agencies, brands, filmmakers, content producers, publishers, broadcasters, casting directors, modeling agencies, event companies, etc. lay the groundwork to accept talent directly through the platform, and also has a services backend: businesses get their own channels on the app to build potentially in place of their own apps, where they can raise talent requirements, showcase their work, and also talk about the services they offer to drive more sales. Call Bollywood provides the services without charge; it might introduce additional profit-making functions at a later stage.
Bollywood Actor Rajesh Shrigarpure who played Rama Naik in the recently released gangster flick Daddy; is a co-founder of Call Bollywood and speaking on the occasion he said; “The world of glamour attracts people from all walks of life, but everyone doesn’t get the chance to showcase their talent & hence despite being blessed with talent it goes unnoticed. With an estimated 300 million smartphones in use in the country today, we see a huge opportunity. While Delhi and Bangalore seem to have the maximum number of users of the mobile app, there seems to be a paradigm shift in the user-base from the metros to the tier-2 cities as well. Unlike the corporate sector where talent-hiring and professional networking are extremely organized and tech-enabled with the likes of Naukri.com, LinkedIn.com, Shine.com, TimesJobs.com, Indeed.com etc., hiring in the entertainment sector is still very obsolete. Our angel investors found the business model of Call Bollywood compelling and realized quickly that the company was addressing a very real and very vast unmet demand. Right now the platform is free for all; we plan to monetize it after some time.”
