When you come from a business family that is deeply into the financial sector, it is a given that your first priority is to expand the horizons of that enterprise (the Anand Rathi Group), something that Priti Rathi Gupta did very well. But if you have a creative bent of mind, it comes to the fore at the most unexpected moments.
That is exactly what happened with Gupta, Founder of LXME, a financial planning platform for women. While racking her brains to find out newer ways to earn better returns for her clients, she hit upon the idea of filmmaking. As she researched the subject, she fell in love with the entire process, from ideating and writing a script to shooting and releasing a movie. “All my hobbies culminated into one focal point, which is filmmaking,” she says.
Filmmaking didn’t help her earn better returns for her clients, “but it sure gave me an opportunity to live my creative spirit”, she says. Her hobby is now her side hustle. She founded Ishka Films—without drawing on the finances of her family business—which has produced movies such as Waiting, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin; and Karwaan, featuring Dulquer Salmaan, Mithila Palkar and the late Irrfan Khan. Two international projects and a web series are also in the pipeline.
“For me, movies are like babies. It is amazing putting all the pieces together and bringing them to life,” she says.
Gupta’s finance experience helps her make movies on a tight budget, while her filmmaking experience adds creative mojo in her principal profession. “Filmmaking is an offset of what I do in financial services. It gives me the ability to think beyond boundaries and question the norm,” she says.