In this exclusive interview, Khalid Mohamed speaks with Tanuj Garg about his remarkable journey from corporate executive to acclaimed film and OTT producer, entrepreneurship, creative conviction, financial discipline, and the evolving future of Indian cinema.

In an industry where careers are often built on lineage and instinct, Tanuj Garg took an entirely different route. Armed with an MBA, a corporate mindset, and an appetite for creative risk, he has spent over two decades shaping some of Indian cinema’s most memorable films—from Rang De Basanti and Jab We Met to Neerja and Tumhari Sulu—before building his own production house, Ellipsis Entertainment.

In this candid and probing conversation, Khalid Mohamed speaks to Garg about unlikely beginnings, the lessons learnt from Ronnie Screwvala and Ektaa Kapoor, the realities of entrepreneurship, and why he believes the future of Indian cinema belongs not to stars, but to scripts.

Khalid Mohamed: Your background and educational qualifications don’t align with those of a film and OTT series producer. Whatever happened?

Tanuj Garg: Agreed, I’m a bit of an oddity. Coming from South Bombay and Cathedral School, where we are educated, speak and write fluent English, and lead a certain kind of life, the usual career trajectory would have been investment banking, finance, consulting… anything where your bonus was bigger than your salary and nobody asked you to sit through a three-hour film!

But I was always the odd one out. I've wanted to be in media and entertainment since I was in school. I was fascinated by the business, the people, the madness of it all. And I've always believed that if you can turn your passion into your profession, you've pretty much cracked the code. The funny thing is, I didn't even have to chase it particularly hard. The opportunities somehow kept falling into my lap, and I was sensible and smart enough to pick them up with both hands and feet!

Today, with Bollywood being a completely different beast, suddenly, being in entertainment is rather glamorous. Some of my school friends who once thought I was slightly mad are now rather fascinated by what I do. I occasionally look at some of them collecting their bonuses and think, perhaps I should have listened to my parents! But then you make a film, you see it come alive, you watch an audience react to something you've created—and you realise that there's a certain kind of satisfaction that no bonus can really buy.  

The UTV Years: Learning In The Trenches

Khalid Mohamed: How exactly did you begin?

Tanuj Garg: After my MBA in the UK, I returned to India and started with Applause Entertainment, Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla's entertainment company. Our first two films were Black with Sanjay Bhansali and Dev with Govind Nihalani—a perfect way to get introduced to the film business!

My real innings began when I joined UTV in Worli and started working with Ronnie Screwvala. Ronnie was unlike anyone I’d ever met: passionate, enthusiastic, focused and, occasionally, completely mad about what he was building. I was never his favourite, but I learnt a tremendous amount from him.

Within a couple of months at UTV, I was asked to set up its international distribution machinery. Suddenly I was flying between Mumbai and London so often that I probably knew Heathrow better than I knew my own office! Eventually, in London, I immersed myself in international marketing, distribution and exploitation of our films. That was probably my biggest learning curve. I was thrown into the deep end and told, figure it out. That's the best education you can get.

I've always been particularly grateful for having joined companies when they were still young and figuring themselves out, rather than when everything was already established and running like clockwork. At Applause and UTV, I never had the luxury of saying, “That's not my department.” Everything becomes your department! You learn to be resourceful, make mistakes, unlearn very quickly. Above all, you learn that there is no substitute for actually being in the trenches.

I've been fortunate enough to get a 360-degree view of the film business—from creative and production to domestic marketing and distribution, international distribution, and eventually the various ways in which a film can be exploited. That holistic understanding has been enormously useful because the film business can be a funny place. Everyone knows their own little piece of the puzzle, but very few people get to see the whole picture.  

Forty Films And Countless Lessons

Khalid Mohamed: Which are some of the films you've been associated with in different capacities? Any memorable experience?

Tanuj Garg: I've been associated with close to 40 films, perhaps a few more, over the last 23 years. I've stopped counting! In some strange way, they’re all your babies.

But if you put a gun to my head, I had a blast releasing Jab We Met, Singh Is Kinng, Welcome, Rang De Basanti, Bluffmaster, Taxi No. 9211, Don and Awarapan.

I remember the excitement—and sometimes the sheer insanity—of figuring out how to market them, stand out, and get audiences to notice them in an increasingly crowded marketplace. International distribution was particularly fascinating because you couldn't simply take what worked in India and replicate it abroad. Different audiences, different cultures, different sensibilities and, at times, completely different rules of engagement are involved. So you had to be inventive. You had to think laterally. You had to sit with the director, interact with the actors, understand what would make the film tick, and find a way of packaging that magic for an audience living thousands of miles away. I probably enjoyed breaking the rules a little more than I should have and had made the right career choice.  

From London To Balaji Telefilms

Khalid Mohamed: Next, why did you move on to TV18 in the UK?

Tanuj Garg: After I finished releasing Don, I was offered a similar role with TV18, which was entering the film business. So I essentially took everything I'd learnt at UTV, packed it into my suitcase, and transported it to TV18!

I thoroughly enjoyed myself there because I could spend much more time at international film festivals and film markets. I loved that world. You'd be sitting in Cannes one day talking to a buyer from Japan, the next day negotiating with someone from the Middle East, and then figuring out whether a Hindi film could somehow find an audience in a market where nobody had even heard of the actors!

I became particularly interested in unconventional markets—finding different ways of exploiting and syndicating our films rather than simply doing what everybody else was doing. It gave me access to a huge cross-section of the international film trade, while I continued to stay closely connected to what was happening in India.

By now I was a fairly hardcore corporate boy! Which, in retrospect, is probably quite amusing given that the film business, at least back then, was known for being gloriously ad hoc, wonderfully chaotic and allergic to structure. That corporate upbringing became my secret weapon. It gave me a method to my madness. The answer to the question “What's the plan?” is simply, “Let's see what happens!” Creativity doesn't have to mean chaos. In fact, creativity works better when you put some discipline around it.

Khalid Mohamed: From a corporate career abroad to Balaji Telefilms in Mumbai. How would you explain the complete change of world?

Tanuj Garg: From Oxford Street, I was in Andheri West! To take the next big step in my career, I had to come back home and be in the middle of the action.

When Ektaa Kapoor spoke to me about heading the film business at Balaji, it was still relatively young. I've somehow always managed to arrive just when a company is trying to figure out what it wants to become!

There are advantages in joining a mature organization. You get the infrastructure, the resources, the perks, the comfort. I've generally chosen the other end of the spectrum—more disorder, more responsibility, more headaches, but also a chance to build something.

Ektaa and I had known each other for years. That helped. We're all part of the same ecosystem, so there was already a high degree of familiarity and an understanding of each other's personalities and working styles.

Still, Balaji was a different universe. I moved from a multinational corporate environment to a tightly held, family-run Indian organization. But I'm incredibly adaptable. I don't get particularly intimidated by change, and I think resilience has always been one of my stronger qualities. I embraced it rather than fighting it.

Balaji was where all my previous experiences finally came together. I had the opportunity to apply that 360-degree understanding to structuring a film business. I was also, at the time, the youngest CEO of a listed company in the film market.

We had an incredible run with Ragini MMS, The Dirty Picture, Lootera, Shootout at Wadala, Ek Thi Daayan and Ek Villain. I came to the conclusion it was high time I created something of my own. That led to the birth of Ellipsis Entertainment. So, in retrospect, the journey from Oxford Street to Andheri West wasn't really a change of world. It was coming home to the world I ultimately wanted to live and breathe in.  

Building Ellipsis Entertainment

Khalid Mohamed: How is it to be an entrepreneur as opposed to being an employee?

Tanuj Garg: Having spent most of my career building other people's businesses, eventually I thought, why not create my own headache? So I took a little break and set up Ellipsis. It was a natural progression for me because I've always gravitated towards organizations that were being built rather than organizations that were already built.

However, moving from being an employee to being an entrepreneur is a fairly brutal reality check. As an entrepreneur, there's nobody above you and there's also nobody below you to blame! The cushion disappears. You multi-task. Every decision eventually lands on your desk. The profits are yours, but so are the losses.

I knew all of this going in. I also had some attractive employment opportunities at the time, but I was keen to give Ellipsis a shot. I thought, at the very least, I owed myself the opportunity to find out whether I could build something of my own. And I'm glad I did.

The entrepreneurial journey has been satisfying. Not necessarily easy, and certainly never fast enough for an entrepreneur's liking. An entrepreneur can have a fantastic year and still wake up the next morning thinking, we could have done better! But I consciously choose to look at the glass half-full. It's been close to a decade now, and we're approaching ten films. One could look at that and say, that's not a huge volume. But it's not the number of cards you're dealt; it's what you do with the cards.

We've backed distinctive stories, unconventional actors, first-time directors and ideas that weren't necessarily the safest bets. We've taken leaps of faith when the more obvious choice would have been to play safe. And that has created something far more valuable than just a film slate—it's created massive credibility and goodwill.

And now I'm at the next interesting stage of the journey—about taking that foundation and making Ellipsis even bigger through larger partnerships, strategic alliances and perhaps a much broader canvas.

The Next Chapter At Ellipsis

Khalid Mohamed: Ellipsis has had some memorable and acclaimed films so far. What's in the pipeline?

Tanuj Garg: We've had an eclectic journey with Neerja, Tumhari Sulu, Why Cheat India, Looop Lapeta, Sharmajee Ki Beti and Do Aur Do Pyaar. And I'm very conscious that I don't want Ellipsis to become a company that simply repeats what it has done before. We've recently completed a hysterical comedy with Lionsgate, a co-production with Twinkle Khanna's Mrs. Funnybones Films, and Dalimb, an original for ZEE5 starring Jitendra Kumar and Priya Bapat.

There's a fair bit brewing at Ellipsis right now. Some of it is familiar territory, some completely new, and hopefully all of it will keep us—and audiences—pleasantly surprised.

Why Scripts Must Lead Stars

Khalid Mohamed: What do you predict for the future?

Tanuj Garg: Film business is going to get tougher, considerably tougher. Frankly, some of that is our own doing. We've made the mistake of throwing disproportionate amounts of money at certain talent and crew, sometimes without enough discipline around the economics of the film. We've also, at times, forgotten one of the most fundamental rules of the business: a good film can still be a bad business proposition if it is made at the wrong budget.

I think that understanding is becoming absolutely critical now. The filmmaking landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years, and in my view, the biggest shift is this: it's no longer about the star. It's about what the star is starring in. Stars are only as good as the content that represents them.

That whole “my favourite star is releasing a film, so I'm going first day, first show” phenomenon has largely disappeared. Audiences are much more ruthless and discerning now. They'll happily watch a star—but only if the film gives them a reason to.

The younger audience is even more unforgiving. Many of them don't have the same emotional relationship with some of the stars that earlier generations did. They're far more willing to discover new actors, filmmakers, voices and stories that feel fresh, bold and unconventional.

We've seen enough examples of so-called “small” films becoming breakout successes to know that audiences are not necessarily buying the packaging anymore. They're buying the experience. This is where I think our industry needs to be honest with itself. Everybody talks about content, content, content. Everybody talks about the script being king. But very few people actually have the courage to behave as though they believe it.

There is still an enormous amount of hypocrisy in the system. We say one thing in public and make completely different decisions behind closed doors. We say content is paramount, and then start with the casting. We say budgets need to be disciplined, and then spend disproportionately on the very elements that don't necessarily determine whether the film works.

But the good news is that the people who genuinely follow their convictions are increasingly the ones being rewarded. So I think the future belongs to producers who can combine creative conviction with financial discipline. You need a compelling story, but you also need to know what that story is worth making it for.

And I think there's one fundamental paradigm shift that needs to happen in our industry: Talent should be chasing scripts. Scripts should no longer be chasing talent.