What does it take to make people feel something again? In an age of passive consumption and fleeting attention spans, IBTIDA Ek Mehfil is betting on intimacy. On the idea that culture isn’t just something you watch, but something you step into, sit with, and carry back home.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve at least once been privy to a rather gorgeous mehfil on your ‘gram feed. Adorned in the most stunning warm colours, impeccably dressed attendees, a star performer immersed in their craft, and a setting that feels at once intimate and cinematic. The kind of experience that sparks both curiosity and quiet envy, even through a screen.
So what exactly did you land at? Started in 2019 by Tanvi Singh Bhatia and Anubhav Jain, IBTIDA Ek Mehfil was born out of a quiet dissatisfaction with how culture was being experienced. And slowly and gradually, the soft, intimate mehfil has managed to not only get people swooning, lining up for the shows, but also bring in a wave of similarly styled cultural events in the country. One dramatic rainy evening in the capital, we talk to the founders about all things IBTIDA Ek Mehfil.
Tanvi lights up when asked about what got her to start IBTIDA Ek Mehfil. “We started this in 2019. Back in the day, the whole essence of culture and methodology was very novel at that point in time. And when we started that, it was a whole sense of bringing back nostalgia and everything that was missing at that point in time. The core two or three things that IBTIDA Ek Mehfil was formed for—one was the events and the cultural space. Events in general used to lack a lot of meaning, personally, for me. And I would actually get very bored when I used to go and attend experiences in India. I was like, okay, there's a huge dearth of people who actually want to come and experience it, you know, in smaller formats. So that was one of the core reasons.
Two, India as a country, seven years back, when we started out, culture was not that fashionable. So when we formed IBTIDA, which is in Urdu "new beginning," it was literally a new beginning of reviving the whole format of cultural experiences in India. We wanted to move away from concerts and auditoriums. A big part of why IBTIDA Ek Mehfil started was also giving artists the platform that they actually deserve. In the West, artists got momentum and recognition. But in India, where there was such a dearth of platforms for talent, we wanted to change that and give artists the stage they need.
Three, four, five—there were many more reasons. I grew up in an atmosphere surrounded by music and poetry. My grandfather used to write. I was around a culture which was very musically stimulating. So that was also one of the core reasons. It was a culmination of factors that resonated with who I was as a person. My co-founder, Anubhav, and I started this and brought it together in 2019. We've been through the pandemic, revived it, and now we've done about 40 to 42 events across India. Music is one facet of what we do, but our IBTIDA Ek Mehfil tree has grown to include culinary, performing arts, this year, and last year were heritage locations and classical artists that we wanted to push. Every year, we have a new format we want to push and celebrate, and we focus on that for the entire year.”
When you talk about cultural reviving culture, how did the idea about including different textures and feelings, different parts of the culture come to be?
Tanvi: I was born in Lucknow. We always feel like, you know, what do we bring back from the old recipes and anything that's old-world? We're basically reviving everything. To answer that, the whole idea of IBTIDA Ek Mehfil is not just music. The whole idea is also the "Making India" initiative that we wanted to put forward. As a proud Indian, I want to always promote Indian brands over and over on the international stage. So we wanted to create a platform that also promotes a lot of homegrown brands. Be it textiles, Indian alcohol companies, tonic water companies, or fashion brands that aren't coming from big conglomerates.
Perfumes are something that has also evolved in the last few years. The whole idea of IBTIDA Ek Mehfil was the India story coming in one space. It's about creating your own India story, where it's about everything that is there. We wanted to touch on different pieces of various aspects that exist in India and put everything together. Music is just one part of that. We realised that worked very, very well because a lot of people were also craving to see India from that perspective. That's what we wanted to bring together when we envisioned the IP.
It looks like an exclusive elite gathering, but you're presenting it as accessible to all sorts of people with no prerequisites. How is that balance coming along, and how does that work for the audience?
Tanvi: One of the reasons was about how artists used to be treated. I remember going to one performance a few years back in a park where a legendary artist was singing. Literally, it was in a park, and there were no takers. When you do free shows, I feel the artist and the overall experience just go away. When I sit with a lot of artists, we always have this discussion—the reason we price our tickets accordingly is because I feel in India, the whole essence of pricing and free shows, especially for classical arts, was taken very lightly.
But in the West, the same price point was relatively higher, and people really gave respect to the arts. Apart from your mainstream Bollywood or Sufi concerts, I felt like classical arts, especially, and I'm stressing this because last year we wanted to change that—when you have legends performing, why should it be a free show or a ticket price that's barely minimal for the art they're showcasing? So one perception was to change that when we started. That's one point from the classical artists’ angle.
The second reason is that, over the years, we realised there's a big aspiring crowd that also wants to experience this. A lot of people don't know much about the arts. I feel music and art are portrayed as pseudo sometimes, only for a certain audience. Some genres of music are also portrayed that way. So we actually wanted to break that and bring it forward to an audience that can relate to it. How do you relate to a younger audience? A younger audience might find it boring. So we also made it a little fashionable. We made it a little more operational, which led to a lot of younger audience coming for it. At the same time, we're keeping the cultural sanctity alive. When you come to an IBTIDA Ek Mehfil, there's always cultural sanctity—the way you're greeted at the entrance, the decorum, the way things are set up. You've created an IP where people actually wait for it and save for it. We've had college kids come through subsidised rates. That's how we're trying to break the patterns in the cultural space.
Anubhav: I think you've covered pretty much all, but from a larger canvas—for us, like purely as IBTIDA, we always treat it like a movement. We see the canvas as a movement because people need to participate. There is no IBTIDA Ek Mehfil if people do not participate. Respect and value can only come if people give respect to the arts. The artist receives that level of information and continues. Our job as aggregators is to create, to give all the senses coming together. When we say fashionable, we always have a dress code. We tend to promote the spirit of Indian clothing. And why is it that only Indian clothing is shown in weddings or cocktails? We're literally the only platform where people actually dress—not just women, but also men—in Indian clothes because they value that intimacy of the evening.
When it comes to the youth and the diaspora we want to cater to, how we seduce them is by making sure all experiences come together. The way we package it, the way we communicate it, be it through social media or with our artists, keeping the language simple. If you read any of our captions on Instagram, we've kept it conversational and dialogue-like with our audience. Phrases like "Shuru Kare, Mil Tehen—let's do it together." The presentation looks larger than life because that's who we are. India is a maximalist country, and that's what we'll always believe in. We showcase that while keeping the value and respect with the artists, but giving the audience everything—not just a place where there's music and you go back home. Everything matters to us. And that formula works really well for us.
I love how you use seduce to draw in the audience! How does the physical intimacy IBTIDA Ek Mehfil creates work in a digital, virtual world?
Anubhav: Absolutely. Whenever we do any IBTIDA Ek Mehfil, we always keep experience first and then the artist. When we say experience first, it's always been the theme first. All our Ibtidas will have a narrative, all will have a meaning. Like the one we did in Delhi on Saturday—"The Archival" with American Express, our third season—if you hear that word, it has a mood, a style, a feeling of nostalgia through the colours we create. We treat it like a movie and a trailer.
Till the time we don't launch our trailer, till the time we don't show those colours and moods on our communication—our Instagram—it could be the easiest thing for us to say, "Save the date, the artist is here, please come." But for us, there's always a campaign around it. The campaign has always been theme first and then the artist. That's what excites people to come. And of course, followed by how people have come to our past evenings. When we weave that together, it's a perfect combination for Gen Z, especially to get excited and give it a try.
Tanvi: I want to add to that. In this fleeting age of digitisation, where our attention spans are so short, and there's overconsumption happening, when you have physical intimate sessions like that, people really enjoy it. We've lost that sense of talking to each other, sitting next to each other, because we're always glued to our phones.
And as much as the digital world is important, the whole idea of being together in a close-knit space where you're actually conversing with people is so valuable. We literally tell people to leave their phones off because that proximity is very important. A huge part of our generation is also very lonely. When they come to our evenings, one of the core essences is—when the artist is speaking a certain phrase or verse or Mukhra, they're like, "Oh, this took us back to a moment. It took us back to our childhood memories."
All that nostalgia is coming back because everyone's realising that now we need to go back to our roots. There was a time in India where we loved the West, loved Western brands, loved all the influx of F&B brands. I think that's totally moving away now with the whole India story taking shape. A big part of that India story is the music, the textile, the culture we're bringing together. So it's a culmination of that feeling. For me personally, that would be over any digitisation or online presence. For us, that will always take more stage.
How do you decide who to collaborate with? Does it work the other way around—you decide the artist and create a theme around it, or is it the other way around?
Tanvi: So every year we change it. Last year, one of the biggest things was classical arts. We had not worked with any classical artists till then. Heritage Locations was something we wanted to explore. I felt heritage locations lacked a certain audience and needed one. When we did Safdarjung's Tomb, a lot of people had not been there. Everyone knows Purana Qila and other monuments, but again, it was untapped. With brands, we're very particular about the story each brand resonates with. There are a lot of beautiful brands whose stories are so beautiful—homegrown brands need that platform too.
But of course, the values and ethos have to be the same for both the brand and us. That's how the merger and marriage happen. So, in some of our evenings, we showcase that in the form of an installation rather than an exhibit. A lot of our collaborations happen with similar values and ethos. And the whole crux has to be the India story. We mostly promote brands and companies that have that because it works really well. Every evening is like that. In fact, one of our most beautiful evenings was when we took a Banarasi saree store and did our event inside that store.
So all our experiences revolve around a certain kind of story and narrative. This year's Kissa is majorly about storytelling and narratives. Music takes the back force, and then there's performing arts and culinary, which we're focusing on in 2026.
Anubhav: Whenever we come up with a theme, we first build our own story or narrative—what's different in it, what's the how and why. We take that seed of our brief and definitely share it with the artist. Whenever they share feedback with us, that's where the relationship comes in. Tanvi has such a beautiful relationship with artists because we've always treated them like they're part of our community.
Even though they're there for two or three hours, they get the brief so well because we explain what kind of audience we're seeking, what communication we're going to use. We share the narrative and talk about what hooks and changes we can make so people feel something fresh and unique. There are times we've gone very deep in terms of working on the set list, the music. There are times when artists remember our guests and do a little share with lyrics, which we don't normally see in typical concerts. That's what makes us really special.
Looking at the lineup—Vishal Bhardwaj in Mumbai, Usha Uthup in Bangalore—it just intuitively feels right. Is it about their personality matching the theme, or is it about finding the best person to tell the story?
Tanvi: Absolutely, the personality makes a huge difference. We've had hits and misses too—that's part of our learning. For Vishalji, it was the first time—Vishalji doesn't sing much, but he's a great storyteller. When I thought of him, he's also from UP and has that lilt of talking. So he was ideal for Lucknow for us when we did our first event with him. Then we said, you know, Bombay also hasn't seen him in that avatar. So we try to merge artists in a way that the city hasn't seen them, according to their personalities. We try to do a combination of what we're portraying, what their personalities are, and what would work in various cities. Because India works a little differently.
In the coming year, we're moving away and going to be working on a lot of upcoming talent. That's going to be our focus this year. After working with everyone we have, I feel that aspect also needs to be worked on. There's a huge amount of talent that needs a platform. Now that we're a platform that's more educational and informative, with a huge following of people who want to come to these evenings, I feel we should take on a bit more responsibility and push out younger artists too.
What made you shift conceptually from music to QISSA, more on storytelling?
Tanvi: I think every year, music has also been done a lot now. There's a lot happening in the entertainment space. If we look at festivals, Sufi, all formats—the entertainment space is booming right now. It's a great time for artists. So we thought, since we've touched music in so many ways, conversations are something that needs to be touched. In fact, in the coming year, we'll be doing a few dialogues with artists and conversation-led experiences. Music is there; we've tapped into it. But this year, we want to foray into deeper penetration of other forms of art. Poetry is going to play a big part in what we do.
A lot of these artists write really well—they're great storytellers. A lot of them write their own renditions, which people don't know about. Majorly, everybody wants to listen to songs that are heard. But some of our evenings start with artists singing their own renditions, which in the beginning is uncomfortable because people don't know the songs.
But after a point, they relate to it. So one big part of moving to other formats is very important. Performing arts are one of the crucial things we want to focus on. We haven't touched dance much. We did one dance performance two years back, which was really well-received. So, apart from QISSA being more about conversations and narratives, this year it will be about storytelling, poetry, and dance forms. The audience also gets bored listening to the same kinds of things. We need to evolve with time and come up with newer concepts that are new to our patrons and audience.
Instead of targeting a specific audience, your work seems to focus on changing how people engage with arts—how do you approach that?
Anubhav: We come from a space where if we're giving the right storytelling and something fresh, let the audience decide for themselves. What really matters is how we can break the stereotype. That's what we've done with IBTIDA. We started this concept called Surrender, which was India's first electronic Betul. We did it with Tech Panda in Kenzani with Hindustani arts. For us, DJs aren't just DJs—they're artists. We did a composition with five Kathak dancers, a lap singer, and a Sitar Tabla duo. It was a beautiful and powerful jugalbandi with a fresh original score we created, which required a lot of rehearsal, but it was so well received.
We treated it as an alter ego of IBTIDA. If we promote the arts, why not promote the dark arts too? That's where the word "Surrender" came from—to make it anonymous and open-ended so people feel Indian music isn't just sitting down. It's also about having bass, beat, and tabla together. We did this at the Royal Opera House, using its architecture with a beautiful musical composition. Then we did one at Corum, where we converted a small space into a 120-seater setting on a Gadda where Kathak dancers are dancing right in front of you, within arm's reach. That's where the magic starts. That's what we love doing.
Are you looking at different regional arts?
Anubhav: Yeah, we are. We're exploring forms like Punjabi jazz, Karnataka jazz, and a lot of jugalbandi. These are definitely going to be part of it. But for us, it's never about targeting a specific group or Gen Z. We believe it should be inviting. What's always worked for IBTIDA Ek Mehfil is that it's more on a referral basis. If you've come once, you'll tell 10 more people to come together. It's never a hard sell for us at all.
Are you looking at expanding to cities where Hindustani arts might not be as familiar, and international destinations?
Tanvi: I think India's diaspora—Pune, Indore, these are actually more culturally inclined cities that understand this more than the metro cities. Metro cities know of it but don't understand it as deeply. Pune has a great, great audience that's culturally very advanced. The shows there sell out heartbeat. This year, like last year when we moved into Lucknow for the first time, we definitely want to look at Pune, Ahmedabad, Indore—these are great cities. These are culturally forward. It's just that we need to figure out how to package and present it so it becomes more relatable. And yes, international has been on our cards for a very long time. So we're hoping this year we'll touch that. I'm looking to speak a little more on that aspect.
Anubhav: I love this question, by the way. IBTIDA Ek Mehfil is a mission, a movement. I think we can confidently say, on behalf of my team and Tanvi, that we want to create India's soft power. So we will always be an export of culture. As Indians, there's a code we use—artists and consumption of content is taken for granted because everything is so approachable and available everywhere.
But for IBTIDA Ek Mehfil, not just about being in India but also about taking this whole ecosystem abroad. It's not going to be in a concert format. It's definitely going to be treated like a proper metaphor where everything—the experience, the spirits, the clothing, the artists, the relationship—will be treated like that only. We want to take the overall core of IBTIDA Ek Mehfil literally abroad and celebrate those occasions across.
Can you share one thing you absolutely love about what you do with IBTIDA Ek Mehfil?
Tanvi: I have too many things, so one would really be less. But you know what I love and what gives me a sick mind—it's more about everything that an IBTIDA Ek Mehfil evening can bring. For me, it's the messages I get after the show ends. I get these really long, heartfelt letter-like messages, which are so beautiful. I've cherished and kept all of them. It's about people who've come to the experience and what they took back. For me, that's my purpose.
That's something I'm going to leave behind, something meaningful I want to do in my life. Apart from building the business and everything it entails, for me, when you finish a show with all the hard work, and you get messages of how they felt, what they took back, who they remembered, and what it made them feel—there's something meaningful you're bringing to people's lives. I told you, one core reason was that people are alone, and they have a lot to speak about.
So for me, that's it. I love the emotion, I love the response people give, I love the love they give. A lot of what we are today and where we are is only because of that. It's also not easy to build an IP. The IP business is not easy at all, and it's getting tougher. But the way we've been with it and just consistently doing it—that's something I truly love.
Anubhav: Tanvi summed it up, but I just feel like—we do a little audit and go back on what we've built. I think we're blessed to get this opportunity to have that little bit of power in this ecosystem, which was always presented in a certain way. And we actually take pride that we can take that canvas and shape it in our own lens, in our own story, and show it to the world. What better way?
And to get that level of love and gratitude from people. We're accelerators or promoters, but it is such a tough space. Because it's not about numbers. It's more about showing what true real luxury India is all about. And it's giving me and Tanvi both a chance to make it what IBTIDA Ek Mehfil abroad is. That's our plan—to take it abroad. So we're just happy we have this opportunity.
Catch IBTIDA - Ek Mehfil next in Hyderabad on 2nd May, 2026. The artists in focus? Nizami Bandhu. Tickets are out now.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.