Mumbai: On 19 July, EkDesh and House of Omkar founder Poonam Kaul celebrated the launch of her latest artistic endeavor- a short film titled Pinky Ka Bastaa. Known for her distinguished career and notable achievements in the corporate world, including her role as the chief marketing officer at Apple India, her foray into the film industry has been equally remarkable.
With over 20 years of experience in leading global companies such as Microsoft, Nokia, and PepsiCo, Poonam Kaul has seamlessly transitioned her expertise into the realm of cinema. Her previous production, The Last Color, directed by Vikas Khanna, gained international acclaim, traversing nearly 20 film festivals worldwide. This film, inspired by a book of the same name, explores the unlikely friendship between a 60-year-old widow, portrayed by Neena Gupta, and an eight-year-old street performer in Varanasi.
Indiantelevision.com reached out to Kaul, where she explained her transition journey from being a CMO and a successful career in tech and corporate to filmmaking, some insights into making of Pinky Ka Bastaa and much more…
Edited excerpts
What motivated you to transition from being a CMO and a successful career in tech and corporate to filmmaking?
Telling stories is what I am passionate about. Whether it is for a brand or through the medium of cinema. Whether it is a 30 sec ad-film or a press release or a 90 min film, at the core lies a story that needs to be told.
Incidentally, I have not transitioned out of being a CMO. While, I have stepped away from a formal corporate role, I have set up my advisory CMO-on-Demand where I work with startups/ organisations and help them tell their story. I enjoy swinging the rope between formal set up as a CMO and film making set up as a Producer
Could you share the vision behind House of Omkar and how it integrates your diverse talents and experiences?
House of Omkar is a newly set up production house focused on creating new age, meaningful and socially relevant content. We want to be the catalysts in driving change around significant societal issues through the medium of cinema. Our debut venture, The Last Color brought forth issues around girl child education and empowerment at one level while highlighting the need for rehabilitation and societal reforms needed for widows at another level. The film successfully travelled across the world starting with the world premiere at Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in Jan 2019 followed by a UN screening to coming home to premiere at the Mumbai International Film Festival in Oct 2019, and finally making it to the Eligibility List for Oscars 2020. The film had a successful screening in LA in October, followed by a theatrical release in Dec 2020 in India.
Barefoot Empress, the second venture was an inspirational story of courage, perseverance of Karthyayani Amma – story of a girl who dreamt of going school, and finally walked to school at 96 years! The short documentary, directed by Chef Vikas Khanna, produced by Oscar nominee Doug Roland, also had Dr Deepak Chopra, the globally renowned Indian American Author as the Executive Producer.
Imaginary Rain is the upcoming venture of House Of Omkar. Imaginary Rain is an inspirational story of a 65-year-old woman chef running a small Indian restaurant in downtown Manhattan ever since she migrated to America. It’s a story of hope, resilience and a winning comeback which is much needed in the current times.
Our other filmography includes Valley of Fireflies, based on the challenges women face in the Apataani tribe of Arunachal while Kitchens of Gratitude at core is how food unites all religions.
House of Omkar has been created by me and my sister Pooja Kaul, a practicing architect specializing in conservation architecture. This is in the name of our father Omkar Nath Kaul and his commitment to drive self reliance and independence for girls, starting with education.
Can you tell us more about the characters in “Pinky Ka Bastaa” and what kind of research did you undertake to portray the issue of school dropouts accurately in the film?
It’s hard truth today that #Covid19 led to 11 million adolescent girls dropping off the education/ skilling grid, globally, as per UNICEF data. In India specifically, the numbers vary from study to study though broadly in line with global numbers! This not only threatens decades of progress made towards gender equality, but also puts girls around the world at risk of adolescent pregnancy, early and forced marriage, and domestic violence. According to multiple studies, more than 50% of the girls are unsure about returning to school post-pandemic, while a staggering 64 per cent have been pulled into care and domestic work.
Pinky Ka Basta is the story of countless girls like Pinky who stopped going to school and have either got married at an early age or been pulled into domestic work! In the 3 min film, we also bring forth the digital divide that exists between girls and boys. If there was one phone in the house during the pandemic, it was obviously given to the boy of the house. Pinky Ka Basta aims to highlight the debilitating impact of the pandemic on education for adolescent girls, bringing forth their ongoing struggles in accessing educational opportunities.
Educating a girl helps empower the next generation. Therefore, besides the societal impact with reduced child marriages, poverty alleviation and increased women’s participation in the society also leads to significant economic impact. According to the World Bank, one year of secondary education can make a 25 per cent difference in wages for women. Education today, is not just a step into the window of opportunity for girls but also a leap forward for a better future
What do you hope viewers will take away from watching “Pinky Ka Bastaa”?
With Pinky Ka Basta, we aim to generate awareness about this significant issue as well as create an enabling ecosystem for young girls who are dropping off school. The goal is to either get them back to school or enrol them in skilling programs so that they can become self-reliant and independent. We hope to build this ecosystem of corporates, NGOs and like minded citizens.
Over the years, I have worked a lot in various organisations as a volunteer both pre and post Covid and the one thing I learnt is that there lots of people wanting to come forward and make a difference, however, they struggle to find a starting point. We hope to give them a starting point – even if you are able to support even 1 girl child in your surroundings and make her independent – e.g., your house help or your veg vendor’s daughter, I would say, Pinky Ka Basta has delivered on its mission.
How was your experience producing “The Last Color,” and some key lessons you learned so as to incorporate into your future projects?
Last Color was my debut venture as film producer. It started off with Chef Vikas Khanna and I looking for a Director and Producer for the book “Last Color”. After meeting several people, we realised that most people were looking at it like a project – which is fair. However, we were too passionate and emotionally involved in the story and therefore, decided to make it ourselves! That’s how House of Omkar was born.
Some of the lessons I learnt – One, you don’t know it all! Period. And you need to keep on learning every single day on the set and beyond. Two, we broke a lot of rules with film – the protagonist of the film is Chotti, a 9 year old girl who had never faced a camera in her life. We auditioned 1000s of girls but we were finally able to get our Chhoti – a first time actor from a school in North Delhi, or Chintu, a young boy and Chhoti’s friend in the film, who we met on the banks of Varanasi playing with his younger brother. Again never faced camera before and both of them have delivered stunning performances. We try to stay true to the story and that was one of the reasons we cast a transgender in the film to play the role of Anarkali, a transgender in the film. We didn’t belittle it by asking a man or woman to deliver on that role. So, we took a lot of risks, a lot of heavy duty risks actually and were not bound by the rule book.
Three, at core it is a beautiful story that you are telling through the medium of cinema and like in marketing, the product has to be great before you start marketing it. Focus on having the best product from your stable, because there is no going back and there will be no Ver 2.0 of the product!
What valuable lessons from your time at Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, and PepsiCo have you applied to your ventures in the culinary and filmmaking world?
I have a Masters in business and not a technology background, however, I have only worked for tech companies other than PepsiCo. In the early years of my career, when I was in Mudra, I realised I love telling stories around tech – whether it was HCL V-Sats or the Max pagers or Ericsson Mobility networks, I loved demystifying them. The one thing that really helped me throughout was being open to learning, every single day. That’s the one big thing that I have applied to film making – every day I learn something new and that keeps me charged and super excited. The film space is so vast and like tech, anything is possible. Second lesson or learning if you say, is eye for detail. You cannot take your eyes off the ball here at all like in a tech environment. Lastly, is the structure. In corporates, we follow a phased approach / a Go-To-Market approach which has GTM 1, GTM 2, GTM3 and when you are ready to roll, that’s launch or GTM4 . I tried to bring that into how we work on the film which initially became hard for everyone to adjust because while there is a Go to Market plan for films, the adherence to what we deliver on each phase was new but it was fun to get that structure being applied and get some semblance of order.
