“Did you see – torrential AI bots in social media hailing the lord “ Chandra “ as reincarnation as “ Lord Krishna “ to protect Tata and India … adopted the political and cinema – social media blitz to promote …”. This came to me as a forward around 100 hours ago and I ignored it as a joke.
I didn’t believe it till I had to attend the Annual General Meeting of one of India’s top creative agencies which was promoted by the four Hollywood Studios. The CEO updated shareholders about emerging business prospects including a materially significant mandate from an Indian client to mass produce social media content portraying Lord Chandrasekhar as an Avatar of Lord Krishna.
I was at the AGM as a proxy for one of the movie funds and not as a shareholder. So it wasn’t right to ask who the client was and what the budget was. But from what I could read between the lines, the mandate originated from a manpower supplier of TCS in the US. And it was I the high seven digits in dollars.
Clearly TCS profits are being put to very creative use. It serves several purposes. First expenses go up and taxes go down. Second it is a good opportunity for vendors to seek the patronage of the future owner of the Tatas. Third, it helps TCS create a supply chain for social media work.
Why bother about doing hard work like building foundational ai models or doing any real technology development. That is just too much of hard work.
But what was truly impressive was a presentation made by the agency which looked at how the public god worshipped actors like MGR, NTR and even Rajnikant. And how Chandra could be positioned similarly.
What the agency however missed out is that this is a South Indian phenomena and something that doesn’t work in North India.
India is like a continent. Each state behaves differently. You cannot be in Poland and think like a Britisher. Or be in Romania and think like a German.
It just doesn’t work.
But keep on the lookout. A few hundred of these posts are being released. And some of them are really creative. Good to appreciate good creative work. And one must thank the client patrons for supporting this. No matter how malafide the intent.
Wonder how our creatives like Paresh Mehta missed out on this gravy train. He has done some really interesting work since his days in Jadoo Works where I was a Board advisor. My friend and mentor Pawan Kumar who helped co create TCS had founded and funded Jadoo Works. And it was under him that Chandrasekhar had started his career at Air India building in 1987.
I remember his words in 1992, “this guy is upto no good”. Arti Subramanian had just joined and was part of the Idli lunch gang below Air India building.
Fortuitous words.
