Jatin Varma talks to Sangeeta Yadav about how his passion of read comics books and watching films influenced him to produce content for his own magazine and TV shows and launch Golden Kela Awards and Comic Con India
From publishing magazine that shut shop in 16 months to launching Golden Kela Awards to producing TV shows and organising first-ever Comic Con of India, 31-year-old Jatin Varma has come a long way. Born and brought up in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar, Varma always loved reading comics and novels.
His life took a U-turn when he went to University of Washington, Seattle in 2002 for graduation and was exposed to the world of creativity. “While pursuing my higher education in Economics and English in the States, I was influenced by a lot of good content that I read from New Yorker, superhero comic books, etc and looked up to the creators like Robert Crumb. I was hooked on to reading Harvey Picker and was introduced to Indie Comics which is an alternative comic put out in 1960s-1970s. It was not just books but TV shows like Jerry Seinfeld that I took inspiration from for being funny and relevant even today,” Varma says, who alumnus from DPS, RK Puram.
He returned to India in 2007 and started his own publishing house. “My family lent me the money for my venture Twenty Onwards Media. Traffic life was the first lifestyle magazine. Unfortunately, it shut shop in 16 months and I don’t know if it was a good magazine or bad as there were not many stores who were willing to sell it and it couldn’t reach the masses who remained unaware of it,” Varma recalls.
Talking about the plight of comic industry in India, Varma says: “Superhero comic books are a powerful tool to tell contemporary stories of life. Publish comics where people value it. The sales are limited in India because you can’t distribute it easily. The sad reality is that people don’t read. You might create some great content but others would not know about it.”
In 2009, he came out with a magazine titled Random which was inspired from MAD. It was Golden Kela Awards, inspired from the Golden Raspberry Awards in Hollywood, that grabbed a lot of attention. “Golden Kela Awards caught the entertainment world by storm and it became an annual affair. I feel there is a sense of duty involved to review bad films. It is a tedious process as you had to sit down and force yourself through these,” Varma tells you.
A random discussion with the Channel V opened doors for producing TV shows. “I went to Channel V to license their character lola Kutty for Random magazine and talked about my idea of coming up with a dating show. They liked the concept and we went and shot a pilot. We produced two seasons in Delhi and Chandigarh and went on to produce some other shows like love Net, Date My Folks and Campus Blog under our production house Random TV,” Varma says.
But it was a struggle for him to figure out what you want to be doing the rest of your life especially when you are in business. “If you try and make something for a TV channel, then it has to be done down because that’s how people consume the content. This is not what I want to do. I don’t really consume that content as I don’t watch any of those. I would not want to make it, even if it makes good money,” he says.
It took Comic Con India that Varma found his calling. “Knowing your films, TV, characters, made hell lot of difference. I have a habit of keeping references of random stuff of pop culture and used to wonder that what I will do with this stupid knowledge. While I was doing Comic Con in 2011 at Dilli Haat, I realised how useful all that now. What started off as a mere experiment turned out to be a huge hit on the first season and pulled a lot of crowd,” Varma says.
To pull it off at age 25 and manage with a team of 20 people was tough. “Doing business in India is itself a challenge as you spend your time and energy in things which should be simpler like paperwork and getting permission. People couldn’t understand what we were trying to do. After the first show, it became easier. To make a successful venture, you’ve to be focussed and ruthless,” Varma says.
Though his main focus is on Comic Con India, Varma tells you that his heart lies in publishing comics and magazines which he will soon restart. “Publishing was something personal rather than the business. Though it is defunct now, my heart says to restart it. The only thing that keeps me away was that I don’t have the bandwidth to focus on it right now. But I will go back to it. It is a matter of time,” Varma says.