Interview with Mrs. Tanaz Basrur

On a lovely Friday evening, 19th of July at 8pm, we had Mrs.Tanaz Basrur, CEO, Trinity Entertainment and Strategic Consultants, join Mr. Arvind, CEO of team.i on our Instagram live series  Expert Speak on the changing landscape…a plethora of opportunities.

Tell us about yourself:

Mrs. Tanaz’s journey in events started in 1981 during her college days. “Circumstances where such that I had to work while I was at college. So I was a trainee at the Sea Rock Hotel. I spent a good 4 years there. I went on to work for the Taj group of hotels after my graduation, and then went on to join The President and worked there for another 4 years”.

But working in the hotel management industry meant that she had to work on different shifts, which started to take a toll on her, and on the parallel she was looking to settle down in life as she was about to get married to her future husband then whom she met in college.

Thus this is why she wanted a straight 9-5 job. This is when she was hired by Time of India. “ I consider myself quite fortunate to get to work at the Times Of India. I worked there as the admin officer.

When they were celebrating 150 years, they wanted to change their old image, and start on a fresh note. Back then filmfare and other Times event was an inhouse function, attended and covered by elite 500 people. This was going to be a year long celebration. The whole look and feel of Times Of India was changing. We conducted a fashion show near gateway of India, and had a ramp that went into the sea and models emerged from there. This was the first time something like this happened in Mumbai, and another event we made was to recreate Mumbai’s CST into an art gallery.

Through the years pan india we made such stunning functions back then. Our advertisers took notice, everyone took notice. Television was emerging back then. That’s when we decided to take all our functions to the public forum.  So the admin department became the core team to take these functions through. So we did the first filmfare award, a week after conducting femina. We used to multitask jobs. Thus all my skills I learnt was from there. I didn’t get to go to an events school. When our work went through well, other editors took it forward further. I was then asked to set up times fm”.

After working there for a while, it was time for Mrs. Tanaz to move on to the next phase. Thus she decided to quit from the Times, and decided to Join UTV under Ronnie Screwala. After working there for a while, she moved to Zee network, and was part of the first Zee Cine awards.

From there, she worked in a few other places such as Procam and Rapport Global Events where she travelled around the world a lot with artists such as AR Rahman and Asha Bhosale. 

One fine day her old boss contacted her and suggested her to put down her experience into a book. So that’s when she started writing her book. “ I wrote my book, and got it launched with John Abraham. We sold the first set of 8,000 books.

This is when I realised I am good at being my own self. Thus I started freelancing. So I conducted my first wedding event, and it was the daughter of Mr. Bimani- owner of B4u. This was done in the UK. I really didn’t have any idea how to do it, but then somehow I did it. After that I realised I could do wedding events 

How was the lockdown period for you?

“In the beginning it was quite terrible, to have somebody like me to be inside 4 walls. It was getting frustrating for me. As things started folding up and we realised that this is here for a very long time, I set myself a schedule. I made a plan for my day. I do yoga in the morning,  zumba in the evening. I have my kitchen to look upto, I spend 2 hours on netflix. I then got busy while writing my book.  I attended webinars. I like to keep myself addressed and well informed. Thus I don’t know where my day goes”.

Your take on the future?

“Virtual and online events are here and here to stay for a very long time but only in the field of corporates”.

Any Advice for the youngsters out there?

“I believe that we are all social animals, and the moment everything is fine- our industry will come back first. Everyone loves entertainment. Just being positive won’t get you bread and butter. You need to earn. You need to have a vision to identify invisible opportunities and grab them. Make it your vision to solve impossible things. Retrospect- look at yourself and identify what you are good at.

Look at others, and see what they are doing so that you could approach them at the right time. Keep looking for opportunities. Upskill yourself, upgrade yourself. Learning never ends. There are so many things happening over online. Know what is happening outside, so that you can reach out to the right people at the right time.

During this period a lot of downsizing has happened. Thus when things open up, these places will be vacant. Thus firms will look for freelancers, who could work with them for a Project and leave”.

To watch the full video, head over to our Instagram page