From gold jewellery to golden tunes

AT THE Singapore Indoor Stadium this Saturday (Mar 4), Indian superstar Anirudh Ravichander will perform to a 12,000-strong crowd – thanks to a show organiser familiar with the Midas touch.

The founder of concert company Maestro Productions, Parthiban Murugaiyan, did not start out in this line of business – not even remotely.

When he was 23 in 1995, he had taken over his father’s gold-jewellery business. Ishtara Jewellery was a small operation then, with one outlet and four employees. But “adapting and evolving” were Parthiban’s key beliefs. In 1997, he upgraded the business through automation, implemented barcode tagging and scanning for inventory control, when such technology was not widespread. But it lifted the business out doing manual sorting and counting.

Besides technological leaps, Parthiban grew the business geographically. Under the brand Luvenus Jewellery, he opened stores in Changi Airport and Orchard Road in 2014, expanding his largely local client base to include tourists.

In 2016, he leveraged Enterprise Singapore’s expansion scheme to enter Hong Kong, opening Luvenus Jewellery’s first overseas branch in its airport. Today, the jewellery chain has nine stores: four in Hong Kong and five at home.

A golden opportunity in the music industry

“We used to sponsor a lot of concerts back in the day,” recalled Parthiban, who says he has a passion for music. He later saw that he could go from being a sponsor to organising concerts himself.

In 2017, he was approached to invest in a concert. He agreed to do it, but was not involved in its planning or execution. In the end, a low turnout resulted in big losses, and a sense of failure that he said he “could not accept”.

His response? “Do another show to overcome (this)”.

Parthiban reached out to renowned performers in India via his contacts in the country, and put together what became Maestro Production’s first concert in August 2018, featuring Indian musician Ilayaraaja and a full-fledged symphony orchestra. Held at The Star Performing Arts Centre in Buona Vista, it was sold out.

Encouraged by this success, he organised more shows: a concert called Voice of Legends in 2019, and All Love No Hate by Sid Sriram last year.

To navigate this “totally new environment”, he had to learn how to manage artistes’ expectations and schedules, as well as handle production elements, such as lighting and sound systems.

Maestro Productions offers artistes the chance to perform not just in Singapore, but also abroad. Last year, it opened offices in the United Kingdom and Canada, in a “strategic decision” aimed at covering the global market. The UK office organises concerts in Europe, the Canada one focuses on North America and the Singapore office, Asia-Pacific concerts.

In Singapore, Anirudh’s concert had a waitlist of 10,000 people before tickets were released; the show sold out in two days, with 8,500 of the tickets sold within 30 minutes on the first day.

For the rest of the year, Maestro Productions has planned five other concerts with different artistes: two in Canada, two in the UK, and one in Singapore.

Parthiban’s ambitions in the music space do not stop here. Future plans include hybrid-concert formats, in which people can pay to watch live streams, and a possible expansion into concerts for English and K-pop artistes, beyond its current focus on Indian artistes.

He also hopes to launch a record label to provide a platform for new Singaporean artistes.

“There are a lot of upcoming young singers and artistes in Singapore looking for a good platform to showcase their talents in terms of songs, but some of them may not have the resources in terms of funding or reach,” he said.

As for going further afield, the Middle East and Australia are possible markets. And while Maestro Productions is fully self-funded and currently profitable, he does not rule out the possibility of an eventual initial public offering or growth via mergers and acquisitions.