Magazine: Brothers of Invention

What do cell phone antennas, recording studios, and jet planes have in common? They’re just a few of the areas in which innovative brothers Ashutosh, C’93, and Vinit Phatak, C’92, have made a mark on their native India.

Ashu, a former economics major, is a successful composer and musician who created the integrated music company blueFROG to energize and professionalize the Mumbai music scene. As India’s first full-service, professionally run music recording, production, and performance facility, blueFROG offers local and international musicians amenities like high-quality recording studios, a popular performance venue, and professional composing, branding, and promotion services all in one spot. He recently opened a second blueFROG in Delhi and hopes to expand to other areas.

Meanwhile, Invision Air, a fleet of small executive jets started by his brother Vinit, who studied philosophy, is helping to open burgeoning areas of rural India to business travelers. The telecommunications supply company he started in 1996 provided the base station antennas for nearly all of India’s wireless telephone operators just as the industry was beginning to boom there, and his Meridien Inflatables provides marine and aviation safety devices for the country’s shipping industry and military.

Q: Vinit, you’re involved in aviation, but you’ve also been successful in other industries. How did one thing lead to another?

VP: I’ve always been fascinated by airplanes. When I was 10, a family friend took me up in a Cessna 172, and I was hooked. After I graduated from Penn, I spent a year working for a start-up real estate finance company in Los Angeles, but aviation was all I could think about. I moved back to India and tied up with an aviation equipment manufacturing firm in LA to sell their products in India. Unfortunately, within a few years the Indian airline industry collapsed and I knew it was time for me to move on, but with the thought that I would return to aviation one day. The next thing seemed to be telecommunications, which was transforming the way we communicated. 

Q: How did you create a space for yourself in the communications industry?

VP: After much research, I realized the antenna was a critical component in the network infrastructure. I found out whose were the best in the world—Kathrein, Germany—gave them a call to ask if I could sell their products in India, and the business began. The safety equipment business came up when a banker friend asked me to help him after his father passed away and left him with a small business that manufactured and supplied niche products for military aircraft and ships. As I was looking to diversify, it seemed like a good opportunity. Then in 2005, a friend and colleague who worked with me on the telecom business and was also a former air force pilot pointed out that there was a completely new kind of jet being developed with space for only four passengers, low capital and operating costs, and great performance. It also could land on very small rural runways. From our telecom business we knew that significant growth was happening in rural India, but physical connectivity to these locations was still extremely poor. So why not do with light jets what we had done with antennas? Using antennas, we helped parts of India get connected via voice; using light jets we could help parts of India get connected via travel. 

Q: How have light jets changed the nature of doing business in India?

VP: Light jets allow business people to travel to up to 200 destinations in India, while traditional airlines only cover 80 destinations. India is growing at a pace of about 7 percent per year, and a significant part of this growth is in rural areas. But getting there by car or train can take anywhere from seven or eight hours to a few days. With a light jet, you can reach these areas within minutes or at the most an hour and a half. These jets allow executives to reach their locations very easily, making them much more efficient. One can actually go to multiple cities in one day, which is impossible by commercial airline. Last month we carried someone to six cities in one day for meetings.

Q: Ashu, your company also has been transformational in its industry. What makes blueFROG different from existing night clubs or recording studios?

AP: Our focus is on programming, and we do it six days a week in two venues. We also curate music festivals, have a music consultancy business, and have state-of-the-art recording studios, all of which work in a synergistic manner. Apart from this, the fact that it was set up by musicians makes it unlike any other company of its kind.

Q: What has its creation meant for artists and music lovers in Mumbai and elsewhere?

AP: The idea popped into my head out of frustration. As a musician who wanted to create and perform independent music (non-Bollywood), there was nothing—no venues to play in, no label to support, and not that many great studios. So the only way out was to create a situation that would enable and empower musicians to follow their dreams and passions. The intention was to be a catalyst in a musical revolution, and I’m proud to say that we have done just that.

Q: Both of you have incredibly multifaceted professional lives. What does it take to be successful in careers encompassing such diverse fields?

AP: I guess I enjoy every moment of everything I do, and I never feel like I’m working. I love composing music, and composing for advertising has taught me a lot, as I’m often doing multiple commercials for different products, with different genres of music, in one day. I see blueFROG with its multiple businesses as an extension of this. 

VP: Surround yourself with good people and be constantly curious. When handling diverse fields you cannot be an expert in all areas, so you need really good specialists in each sector whose integrity and domain knowledge is impeccable. You have to have a strong personal and trusting relationship with them that allows for the real truth to flow through to you no matter how good or bad it is. Besides that, a constant desire to learn and curiosity about the details is what keep me going.

—Tracey Quinlan Dougherty