In The Hot Seat - Ameen Khan, The Founder Of Nazar Battu Productions | Interview

Today IN SEARCH OF SMILE team got the chance to interview Ameen Khan for In The HotSeat series. Ameen Khan is the Co-Founder of Nazar Battu Productions. His startup Nazar Battu productions is one of the popular names on Youtube and all other digital platforms.   




Question-1: Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

 I am an entrepreneur by profession, and currently, I am running a production house, Nazar Battu Productions. Now, Nazar Battu is one of the renowned names in the YouTube industry, and with that, we are also into corporate films, fiction films, and TV advertisements.

Question-2: What is the story behind the creation of Nazar Battu Productions?

 After leaving my full-time job in 2011, I had an idea, and I felt that it was the right time to follow my passion. So that time, entrepreneurship was not a trend. These things were not present as much as they are now, but we found this production company idea in 2011 and began short filmmaking. Digital platforms like YouTube weren't as big as it is today. We were struggling from 2011 to 2015. We made many short films and pitched many things. At the same time, we earned our bread and butter through corporate films.

We had left TV and corporate films, so we had a fair idea of doing things. But in 2015, when digital platforms had a more significant presence, we started Nazar Battu Productions, where we felt that we could earn money through YouTube or digital content and make free content or content that we wanted. When you are a part of any team or firm, you don't have many choices to work freely. You might not like other's ideas much, but somehow you have to coordinate. When we started making content, it created magic. The audience base in the filmmaking was less in the starting days, and the main difficulty was that we were not aware of the audience response. But with technological improvement, we were able to know whether the audience enjoyed our content or not.

At that time, it was a monetization-based business model on YouTube. It became a middle platform where you could showcase your talent. Then, we started Nazar Battu in 2015. Now in 2021, we not only have 3 million+ subscribers on our YouTube channel, but also we have collaborated with India's well-known and talented YouTubers. Currently, we are creating a large number of content on multiple digital platforms.

Question-3: What is the biggest challenge you faced in your entrepreneurship journey?

When you start with something minimal, you have to manage things with limited resources. In today's scenario, if you have a good amount of money, you can easily buy anything, such as a camera. We didn't have enough money to purchase a camera and audio sound recorder. It takes a robust financial setup to go for the production of films.

We are blissful to have challenges where we have to work with limited resources and team members. It was also a question: how can a team of four only handle such a big project, and how will we do content creation? How will we shoot or write our content? The challenges were at a different level. We did not have any location or aspects, which was a big challenge, as we had to give our best with limited resources.

To overcome the challenges, you have to prepare a proper strategy

and the most important thing is that you have to trust your team. Every person had their set targets. Every time we used to have a set target that we have to reach here. We can only overcome the hurdles and problems by trusting ourselves and your team. We used to take our process gradually. We used to do slow shoots because a crew of 3 to 4 people has to manage everything. We also used to manage the convince. We could not travel by cab because of our limited budget, so we traveled by metro in the early mornings.

We need to look at our budget. Also, we used to take favor from many of our friends. Some friends used to have a terrace, while some used to have a home. For example, if we had to shoot for a scene of a coffee shop, then we used to go door to door. We used to ask people if we could shoot in the early morning for about 20 to 30 minutes, and that's how we managed to shoot our videos.

The hard work paid off. Soon things started to fall into place, and results start coming out. Now, whenever we go for a shoot, most people know us or watch our videos, so it's easy for us to convince them for any shoot at their place.


Question-4: Every brand/creator sometimes receive negative comments and hate. What does your team personally do when they receive such hateful comments?

To deal with hate, you can ignore such comments and focus on the positive ones. So it all depends on you when it comes to dealing with hateful comments. Many people will try to push you down or get jealous of your achievements, but you need to focus solely on creating good content. In simple words, ignore haters and work hard to create content for those who love your content.

Question-5: How can one create his production like Nazar Battu?

The most important thing to keep in mind is that one should be familiar with the work that they are doing. To learn the job, you should first assist a good team, which is the critical point. It says what type of people you are working with. Then the sky is the limit for you.

When you join a team in any production house through any process, you work with a different team and observe their working environment. You watch the pros and cons of the work yourself. You see what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. So you get an idea of the hard work.

I'd say that you need to have a good observation all the time. Even the most minor thing that you may avoid considering is what often comes in front of you to figure out.

To put it simply in two lines, you have to be a reasonable observer, after which the magic happens. You have to be a good team leader because when you open any production house or any production company, the biggest challenge is team management. Team management is the key. It is essential to know whether you are with your team as a boss or as a leader.

Question-6: What things should content creators take care of while approaching brands or content creators while collaborating?

In the entertainment industry, it's an advantage and an unfortunate scenario that it cannot run without brands and advertisements. It is also essential for brands, as it helps them promote their products and gives them revenue value. And the same situation happens to us when we are creating content. We need a lot of money. So this is a very mutual collaboration from both parties. Sometimes we face the issue as the brand has different guidelines and demands while a creator demands its freedom. But later on, with mutual understandings, everything is performed fitly. As Lord Krishna said in Bhagavad Geeta, "Life is all about balance", so the perfect content creation should also sustain an ideal balance.

Question-7: Nazar Battu has collaborated with many YouTubers. Who is your favorite, and why?

I personally love Harsh Beniwal and CarryMinati. That's because I have seen their journey from the beginning. I had personally seen that CarryMinati had 14K subscribers in the starting and now, with his hard work, he has millions of subscribers in his YouTube channel. I have seen that Harsh, who wanted to do a lot in his life in his starting days, and now, he is doing a lot of big things. We were fortunate enough when CarryMinati started his career. We collaborated with him, looking at his talent and not the number of subscribers. We constantly collaborate with skill and not the numbers, and we will continue to do the same in the future. We have lots of calls for creativity.


The whole IN SEARCH OF SMILE Team would like to thanks Ameen sir for his contribution towards In The HotSeat series and we hope this interview will help you to start a successful career on YouTube.  


 Join us on: INSTAGRAM |  TWITTER |  TRIPOTO  INDIBLOGGER | Linkedin

Comments

  1. Nice to read about Ameen Khan, Loved the interview.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting interview. YouTube certainly is a good medium to grow a creative business

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am learning script and ideas how to make a comedy with your videos, thanks to nazarbattu

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interesting interview. YouTube certainly is a good medium to grow a creative business

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment