Jalandhar man to run media production house in UK
Avneet Kaur
Jalandhar, October 24
Gurtej Singh Thukral (31) from Jalandhar has managed achieve a feat which many can just dream of it.
He has carved a niche for himself as an international entrepreneur and recently, got an entrepreneur visa for Britain. He has turned his idea into a successful business plan. In England, he is about to start his media production and marketing house — Britpanj.
As international media tend to work with competent home-grown professionals, Gurtej calls himself a go-to man and seems very excited to begin his new journey.
“I have always loved the UK and loved to work with the Brits. They are professional and stand by their word. They appreciate creativity and give space to good talents or ideas. My hard work and experience has finally paid me. Now, I am about to start my business officially in the UK as an entrepreneur by the next month,” he added.
Talking about the growing craze of the youth to settle abroad, he said, “I am proud of my heritage and hometown. You can take Gurtej out of Jalandhar, but you can never take Jalandhar out of Gurtej. I love Jalandhar and it is better than other parts. It the city of NRIs and people have a good sense. It is a media hub of South East Asia too as a large number of newspapers, channels and radio stations are based here.”
“According to me, transparency and professionalism in foreign nation attract Indians to settle abroad. Students should not simply apply for a study visa and move out. They should look for good opportunities, should work hard and gain expertise in their fields. Jobs will follow them,” he added.
Sharing the challenges he has faced, Gurtej said, “Things were never too difficult for me. As I have an experience of 11 years in the field of print and electronic media, I have enough knowledge of my field. It just took me 15 days to come up with my business plan and apply for the entrepreneur visa. Thereafter within another two months after clearing my interview, I received my visa. The toughest part is the interview as the interviewer can ask you any question from anywhere related to your work. So only those with authentic knowledge and clear vision can crack it.”
While sharing his journey, Gurtej said, “Think beyond obvious. I wanted to become a meteorologist and I did BSc in Geography. For a long time, I had also given weather reports to many publications. But fortunately, I was selected by a radio channel in an RJ hunt in the college. I never wanted to volunteer for the auditions. I was selected out of 400 professional debate and elocution experts and after that, I never looked back.”
Gurtej has worked with Akaal and Sikh channels in the UK. He has produced jingles for nearly every British Punjabi radio station. He giggles, “My voice is already very famous throughout much of the younger end of the Punjabi community.”
Though he has anchored for Punjab Radio in London, he had also worked as a station head in Jalandhar. Gurtej has also anchored a number of Punjabi reality shows.
