Savinay Shetty is the Founder and Director of Misfits Inc., an independent music company building sonic landscapes across mediums. Since founding Misfits Inc. in 2019, Savinay Shetty has built the company ground-up using an artist-first ethos, and worked across music, live entertainment and culture while developing long-term strategies for all its creative properties. Informed by his rich experience across the whole spectrum of the culture and entertainment industry, Savinay Shetty has helped take Indian artists into international markets across the US, UK, EU, UAE and Africa, and was a delegate for the Sounds Australia x SXSW Sydney’s Inbound Exchange Program 2024. He is also a GRAMMY Professional Member.
Early Career & Music
Savinay Shetty began his career in events in 2008, working on large-scale productions before transitioning into music and entertainment. After completing a master’s in IPs and Festival Management from Leeds Beckett University, he joined Oranjuice Entertainment (part of the Fountainhead MKTG Group) in 2011, where he worked across artist programming & management, brand solutions and live IPs including the Mahindra Blues Festival, Johnnie Walker The Journey, Smirnoff Experience, MTV Block Party, Chuckle Festival, amongst several others.
In 2017, he moved to OML, building their international comedy touring circuit where he built touring setups for artists like Zakir Khan, Varun Thakur, Atul Khatri, Kunal Kamra & the entirety of their roster during his tenure.
Using his collective experience of over a decade across music curation, IP building, international touring & more – he ventured his way into Artist Development, A&R, Music Publishing – thus starting out Misfits Inc., as a music company.
Transition to Entrepreneurship
Misfits Inc. stemmed from the idea of “Misfits In Cooperation,” in 2016, upon the insistence of Savinay Shetty’s friend & close collaborator, Rafael Pereira. In 2019, Savinay Shetty founded Misfits Inc. with Nayantara Kumar, bringing together the different strands of his experience into a distinct model for a music company. In its early years, artists and collaborators including Karunesh Talwar, Ankur Tewari, Tejas Menon, Bradley Tellis and Sidd Coutto were among those who showed their support and became part of the foundation around the company. Savinay Shetty built Misfits Inc. around a simple premise: to create a more collaborative ecosystem around artists, where music extends into creative direction, partnerships, storytelling, live experiences and original IP.
About the Company
Misfits Inc. is a music company working primarily at the intersection of audio & culture. Having worked with OTT platforms, brands, major labels and films, collaborating with the likes of Coke Studio Bharat, Universal Music India, Warner Music India, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Diageo, Google, Meta, Hermes, Conde Nast India, Tanishq, MTV, Saregama, Excel Entertainment, Tiger Baby Records, amongst several others.
Alongside this, the company has built an independent catalogue which includes artists like Tough On Tobbaco, Tejas, Aarifah, The Colour Compound, Sidd Coutto, Sudan, pruthvi, Champak, Ankur Tewari, Hashbass, and Shubham Kabra. That catalogue became the seed idea for a holistic, on-ground experience for sonic driven projects, which is how Not Dead Yet – it’s aLive!, came to be. In commemoration of five years of the IP, Misfits Inc. produced and released a compilation — an ode to capturing independent Indian music in its time.
Impact & Vision
For Savinay Shetty, work has increasingly centred on developing the music and culture space in India systemically. Over the course of his career, he has identified and nurtured emerging talent while building sustainable practices around artists and their careers.
Through Misfits Inc., he continues to work towards a more independent and interconnected music ecosystem, where music works as a creative force beyond the rubric of business exercise.The larger vision is to build Misfits Inc. as a creative infrastructure: one that brings artists, collaborators and audiences into a shared ecosystem, supports long-term creative growth, and makes room for experimentation without compromising artistic integrity whilst working towards cultivation of artists who can be globally exported with no bar on their socio-economic demographic.
