Anjula Acharia on Launching 5 Junction Records and Her Mission To Make South Asian Talent Go Global

Anjula Acharia wolfs down her lunch just minutes before her virtual meeting with The Hollywood Reporter India. A fleeting moment of respite before the entertainment spotlight beckons once more. The cross-cultural entrepreneur and architect of Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ Hollywood stardom, jokes that she dances across time zones — New York, India, England, and Europe. For someone who creates stars out of artistes, the sun truly never sets on Acharia.

With a casual shrug, Acharia dismisses the notion that she’s the go-to catalyst for Mumbai’s aspiring stars, who want her to give their career a global kickstart. “Now you’ll have to tell me who they are — I might just want to rep them!” she says with a laugh, before being playfully nudged that she might’ve already passed on some of them.

Over the last two decades, Acharia has emerged as a trailblazing leader in entertainment.

Starting as a senior partner at a London-based executive search firm, Acharia found her breakthrough when she founded Desi Hits, a pioneering content creation and entertainment company in 2006, that bridged the gap between South Asian talent and the Western world. As a Punjabi kid who grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, the platform was the perfect marriage between her love for music and her entrepreneurial skills.

But Acharia found wider global success, especially in the Indian pop culture space, when she spotted potential in Chopra Jonas to cross over, meticulously orchestrating her Hollywood debut and skilfully rebranding her international image.

“With Desi Hits, I worked with everyone, from Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, Eminem, Rihanna, to Britney Spears,” says she. Brimming with enthusiasm at the time over the possibility of what all her record label could do for South Asian artistes, Acharia narrates that it was around 2008 that Jimmy Iovine — of Interscope Records, who had invested in Desi Hits — told her something that shook her: That the platform would fail.

“He said Desi Hits was way ahead of its time. And he was right. It was pathbreaking, but it was very difficult to make money. We didn’t have streaming services back then,” she says.

Acharia’s secret sauce lies in her resilience and adaptability. “My brain is like a switchboard,” she says, reflecting on her ability to navigate setbacks and pivot when needed. “I’m happy to change paths and go in a different direction. If a plan derails, I’m okay with it.”

Desi Hits was the music label that she signed Chopra Jonas for, but Acharia soon realised that music wasn’t the best way to build the actor’s global career. A pivot was necessary, even if it needed Acharia to step away from music for some time. “A lot of people would be like, ‘Oh, something’s not working,’ and give up, right? I don’t do that.”

Which explains why she turned Chopra Jonas’ career from pop music stardom to acting, landing her the game-changing 2015 series Quantico. Acharia recalls telling Iovine that she instead wanted to steer Chopra Jonas’ career back toward acting after having delivered chartbusters like, “In My City” and “Exotic”.

“I’d seen this shift, which was happening in America. Everybody was watching these shows with these diverse female leads,” she says, mentioning Viola Davis in How to Get Away with Murder (2014), Kerry Washington in Scandal (2012), Sandra Oh in Grey’s Anatomy (2005) and Sofia Vergara in Modern Family (2009).

“I wondered why not a South Asian woman as the lead? That was kind of a moment to really launch Priyanka on American television and lead a show. She was the first South Asian lead in America for that,” Acharia beams with pride.

It also explains why she has returned to music, several years after Desi Hits. In April, Acharia and Warner Music Group launched 5 Junction Records, a joint-venture label which aims to make South Asian artistes reach North American markets and has already onboarded talents like actor-singer Nora Fatehi and rapper King.

“I asked Iovine what he thought of this because he’s never been wrong about anything he’s predicted. And he was like, yeah, the time is right now. With artistes like Diljit Dosanjh performing at Coachella and touring the United States, it’s an exciting time.”

Acharia’s optimism is backed by how she has seen the South Asian diaspora in America and the United Kingdom evolve significantly. They’re now in top-earning brackets, she notes, holding prominent positions as CEOs, entrepreneurs,

and artists.

“They crave experiences that reflect their culture, consumed in a way that’s familiar to them. The era of seeking validation from the ‘white gaze’ is fading. Moments like Diljit’s appearance at the Met Gala, where he was one of the most searched individuals, highlight the growing influence of South Asians in American pop culture.”

Acharia’s ability to assemble her own Avengers dates back to the remarkable true story of how she sniffed global potential in Chopra Jonas while she was working in a tech company in the Silicon Valley and had nothing to do with the entertainment industry.

It was the music video of the track “Right Here Right Now” from the 2005 crime comedy Bluffmaster! that instantly captivated Acharia. Chopra Jonas had that “swag,” and Acharia could sense a throbbing, magical, global-Western sensibility.

“I vividly remember my mom introducing me to Priyanka. I wasn’t familiar with Hindi films, but I was spellbound by her. Years later, while working with Iovine on the “Jai Ho” remix for the Pussycat Dolls, I mentioned Priyanka to him. He was impressed, and we started exploring her potential.”

It wasn’t enough that Acharia had sensed something in Chopra Jonas that the actor herself hadn’t recognised back in India, because of her run as one of the topmost stars of Hindi cinema. If Acharia had to be her manager, there was a lot she had to prove. She recalls the first phone call between them, where the actor listened more than she spoke, leaving Acharia feeling that the meeting had tanked. However, Chopra Jonas would later reveal to her, laughing, that she was merely “absorbing” all her grand ideas.

“What drew me to Priyanka was her global sensibility and swag. Her experience living in America during her formative years helped her develop this sensibility. When we collaborated, she showed a keen interest in hip-hop, which resonated with me,” she adds.

Since Quantico, Chopra Jonas has starred in various tentpole Hollywood biggies, including Baywatch (2017), The Matrix Resurrections (2021), the Academy Award-nominated The White Tiger (2021) and the Prime Video globe-trotting espionage

series Citadel.

Acharia insists she wanted Priyanka to be “more than just a pretty face” and wanted her name to be “synonymous with success”.

“To achieve that, I focused on infiltrating the pillars of pop culture — music, film, fashion, sports, and more,” she reveals the mechanics of getting the actor to the top. Acharia is aware that several artistes now want to crack the code to global glory as well, and have often asked her if there is a secret mantra. There exists, what she calls, a multifaceted approach, but the key to crossing over is having a global sensibility that translates across markets.

“As an entrepreneur and investor, I always think about how to take something niche and make it mainstream. My mantra is simple: it’s niche till it’s not. I’ve successfully done this across various industries, and I’m passionate about bringing new talent to the forefront,” she concludes.

Anjula Acharia’s journey to becoming a prominent figure in the entertainment industry was marked by an unconventional path. Before managing Priyanka Chopra Jonas in 2010, Acharia spent years in the tech and startup world. She co-founded Merchant McKenzie, an executive search consultancy, and later held a senior partner role at the Forsyth Group, a boutique executive search firm. In 2006, she founded Desi Hits, a pioneering content creation and entertainment company that collaborated with music labels and global stars like Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, and A.R. Rahman. Acharia is also an early-stage investor.