4/ Gaurav Kapur: Not Just An IPL Presenter

(Written for — https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-financial-pandora/)

Gaurav Kapur is someone who believes in adopting different things, giving it a shot and then deciding what works. He has jumped ships on numerous occasions in his professional career and he is arguably the most malleable, most witty and the sharpest person one can have the joy of knowing.

RJ, VJ, actor, sports presenter, podcaster, entrepreneur, CEO and an angel investor. The last time you saw someone doing so many things was probably a godman!

In this short piece, I have tried to reflect the ideas that Gaurav believes and has faith in. Hopefully, we all can learn from the experience that he has gained over the years in the media industry. That, I believe is true justice done when it comes to highlighting someone’s profile.

Early Life

Gaurav completed his schooling from Mount St. Mary’s School, Delhi and got his undergraduate degree from Sri Venkateswara College in Delhi.

Gaurav’s family is full of bankers and so naturally, he has a knack for personal finance and stays updated with whatever is happening in and around the investing world.

From an early age, he was into singing, debating and dramatics. Inherently, he was a performer and loved the stage. No wonder that same child, after so many years affectionately calls himself a ‘multimedia-mercenary’ (and rightly so).

The First Gig — and many that followed

Gaurav was 16 or 17 and it was around the same time when radio was starting to get a lot of traction in India. He knew there was a ‘creative keeda’ within him and he wanted to have a shot at radio.

He idolizes Roshan Abbas, who is a renowned Indian radio jockey, and at that point was a very big deal. Inspired by Roshan, Gaurav wanted to get on radio but didn’t have any resources or relevant network to set his foot into the industry.

Fortunately, he had a relative from whom Gaurav scraped out a name of a radio producer and got to know his whereabouts (i.e. office).

“Udaan bharne ke liye chalaang lagana zaruri hai”

Somehow, he managed to get the producer’s number and called him saying that he wanted to work with him. Many of us would think twice before dialling the number and most of us wouldn’t even do that in the wake of self-censoring ourselves.

However, he took the leap of faith. He believes that you either try and fail and not try and fail. You don’t want to be the audience in the arena cheering for the performer, you want to be the performer.

After pitching in as replacements and doing a lot of work as a ‘filler’, Gaurav got his dedicated show on radio. It goes on to show that to do something new, you don’t need an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ or some other fancy word associated with having a business mindset.

Well, to become big you just need to have some confidence and the most important thing, you need to START!

Optimize your strengths, Outsource your weaknesses

There are a lot of self-help books which try to sell the idea that you need to work on your weaknesses to minimize it. Gaurav believes in outsourcing’ rather than ‘minimizing’.

In business, one has to be extremely honest to himself about his strengths and weaknesses. He believes that rather than working on your weaknesses, it is much more prudent to outsource it to someone who can perform it better than you. While at the same time doubling down on your strengths.

Working only on your core competency and that which you’re good at, filters out anything which do not require your immediate attention. He believes that this very idea followed by being aggressively consistent can bring exponential gains for the business.

You are the biggest blue-chip stock you’ll ever own

He believes that one should invest in his/ her self and do what they think is right for them. By investing in yourselves, he focuses on upskilling and levelling up. Most of the new age businesses these days require a particular set of skills that they cannot bargain with.

Skills are a niche that is created, so much so that if you possess the relevant skill, interviews can become a cakewalk for you as you have no competition. Over the coming years, degrees can run out of fashion but upskilling will never be out of it. A plethora of content is available for you to learn free of cost or if it isn’t, pay money for courses which you think are relevant in your work domain that will upskill you over your peers. That is an edge that you create which uplifts your profile.

Invest in yourself. You are the biggest blue-chip stock you’ll ever own.

Breakfast with Champions

The show for which Gaurav probably got the most attention for, was a show called ‘Breakfast with champions (BwC)’. The central idea of the show was to have a casual free-willing chat with his (famous cricketers) friends and let them tell their story to their fans.

So what made him kickstart a show based on this very idea?

Gaurav realized that when it comes to live broadcast, channels have pretty much aced at everything. From pre-match shows to live coverage of the matches and to post-match analysis everything is made professionally with a propriety decorum and behaviour. Also, with 72 cameras following you!

Although, despite all these efforts there was an emotional connect which was missing between the fans and the players. He realized that this was a gap in the industry and there exists a potential to exploit this gap. Channels were not going to compete on this front as they only care about broadcasting rights and rights are not getting any cheaper!

Gaurav pitched the idea of the show to many channels, only to get rejected later. After much rejection, he decided to produce it himself and put it on Youtube for fans to consume it free of cost as it was a show primarily made for the fans!

This lead to the birth of Oaktree sports.

Oaktree Sports — Promoting An Ideology

With a small handy team, Gaurav kickstarted his first company and went on to produce content for BwC. Eventually, the idea of Oaktree was to promote all kind of sports and not just cricket. They wanted to showcase stories related to sports that inspire the next generation to adopt a sport.

Gaurav believes that storytelling is the best form of promoting anything. Only if you promote a sport correctly, it will attract the audience and viewership. Viewership attracts brands. Brands get money and eventually this is how any sport becomes a big deal.

After BwC, Oaktree went on to produces more shows in the sports domain like India plays, Miss field and A little more GK. It is a beautiful initiative by Gaurav and his team to project India on a bigger pedestal when it comes to sports and allied activities.

We hope they continue to inspire the younger crowd because they are the ones who will be the next big thing!