Digitally yours

Jasmine Singh

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Gurpreet Singh was not in a hurry, but neither did he want to wait for long. He was confident, at least he felt that way, when he was just 17. It was then Gurpreet launched mobile services in Punjab, when it was still at a nascent stage. 

Now, after almost 14 years, this young entrepreneur from Mohali is credited for playing a key role in steering the Indian digital entertainment space. From spear heading the digital business for the Viacom18 network, setting up the content business for du (UAE), a prolific stint with leading companies like Hungama and Disney, Gurpreet has empowered strong symbiotic relations with content aggregators, creators and digital platforms alike.

“I’ve been born and brought up in Chandigarh, and always wanted to become a computer engineer. At 17, when I was in my first year of Computer Science Engineering studying at GNDU, I set up a web portal called Funtooz in 2002. The website allowed users to send text messages from their web-enabled computers to mobile phones, and download black and white picture messages and monophonic ringtones.” 

From college Gurpreet moved to Mumbai and joined the content portal Hungama and assisted them with the launch of various content products. “Within a couple of years I relocated to Dubai to help the newly launched telecom operator DU set up their VAS platform. Soon after, I joined UTV-Disney and helped them launch their line of consumer engagement mobile products, and then headed the digital/ mobile team at Viacom18 helping develop synergies between digital viewers and V18’s bouquet of original content,” shares the man who can list thousand and one reasons that would favour the word technology. 

It was around the same time that Gurpreet started One Digital Entertainment with his friend and business partner Shabir Momin, with the intent of bringing together several different kinds of creators under one roof, having them release content on their own channels and thus build a platform of their own, and help each other in making the content popular. “Thankfully over the years the trend caught on, and the number of creators has only gone up. Today we’re at 2,500 channels and more than 800 artists,” he adds.

Gurpreet works with a lot of Bollywood and Punjabi industry celebrities. One word that makes all the buzz today is marketing, a word Gurpreet is familiar with and want to make the celebrities familiar with it too. 

“Our advice to most of the celebrities we work with is to use social media every single day. We tell them to think of their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts as daily newspapers that carry information exclusively about their lives. Inconsistent, irregular, irrelevant content is only going to reduce the readership of a newspaper, and so it goes with your social media accounts as well.”