MUMBAI: British Council has announced Aishwarya Natarajan as the winner of the Young Creative Entrepreneur Music Award 2011. Natarajan, who owns Indianuance, an artist management and concert-programming outfit dedicated to Indian classical music,  is the first woman and first Indian classical music entrepreneur to win the award.

She will now go on to UK where British Council will introduce her to like-minded entrepreneurs in the UK music industry, creating opportunities  for new collaborative projects between the two countries. The aim of Young Creative Entrepreneur is to strengthen cultural ties between two countries and to learn from each other.

Each year the British Council recognizes and promotes creative talent in the music industry through The Young Creative Entrepreneur (YCE) Music Awards. The Award is open to entrepreneurs between 25 to 35 years old, working with the music industry in India across all fields including artist management, music development and management, music broadcasting, music retail and music journalism. Music entrepreneurs from across the country had applied, and six finalists were chosen.

The finalists of this year included Sahil Makhija of Demonstealer Records, Sohail Arora of artist booking agency Krunk, Gaurav Dobhal of Tempostand.com, Sanju Nair of music mercandising company Rock Robe, Harigovindan Njeralathu of Njeralathu Kalashramam, and Aishwarya Natarajan of Indianuance.

Each finalist gave a detailed presentation which was judged by Atul Churamani, VP Saregama, Collette Weston, Head of UK Trade & Investment for Western India -British Deputy High Commission, and Tasneem Vahanvaty, Head of Music, Film And Interactive, India & Sri Lanka, Birtish Council.

In the past, the Young Music Entrepreneur award has been given to Vijay Nair (CEO, Only Much Louder), Gaurav Vaz (bassist and manager of Raghu Dixit Project) and Girish Talwar (Director, Only Much Louder). Vijay Nair went on to win the International Young Music Entrepreneur Award in 2009, and since then has done some fantastic work in India with the aid of the UK music industry. Projects like NH7 Weekender, Invasion and Soundbound have all been aided by the YCE. Vijay Nair met Martin Elbourne one of the partners of the Bacardi NH7 Weekender though the Young Music Entrepreneur Award in the UK 

The Raghu Dixit Project managed by Gaurav Vaz, YME winner in 2008, has broken through to the UK in a big way, playing over fifty concerts there in 2010, including festivals such as The Great Escape and prestigious clubs like the Jazz Caf?© in London. They finished off the year on a very high note with an appearance on the renowned Jools Holland show. In 2010, British Council took a break from the award format and organized a music entrepreneur tour, creating opportunity in the UK for music entrepreneurs who well deserved it. Nevil Timbadia came back to India and organized a very successful tour with UK beatboxing legend Shlomo while Arjun S. Ravi editor of Indiecision.com made a decision to change the content of the popular website to include more international music and news.

About Aishwarya and Indianuance

Realizing that Indian classical musicians deserve greater exposure, better management and people to work with who understand their music, Aishwarya decided to do something about it. She set up Indianuance, an artist management and concert-programming outfit that is dedicated to Indian classical music and its allied forms. Through this she aims at bridging the gap between musician and audience by arranging, curating and marketing music on behalf of the musician.

The team at Indianuance works across several verticals such as PR, Distribution, Programming, Artist Management as well as writing and designing. Some of the artists handled by them include Shashank Subramanyam, Gundecha Brothers and The Manganiars