After establishing his presence in real estate, I.T and Insurance among other sectors, Dhaval Patel is now set to make inroads into the world of Bollywood. Sweetiee Weds NRI which releases on June 2nd and stars Himansh Kohli, Zoya Afroz, Darshan Jariwala and Kiran Joneja in pivotal roles is Patel’s first film as a producer.
Tell us about Sweetiee Weds NRI and how did you get involved in this project?
Cyrus Dastur and I have been good friends for a long time. He had approached me with a proposal for this film through his company Grand Motion Pictures (co-founded with Sada Bhuvad and Tariq Mohammad). I loved the story and decided to co-produce it.
The film is a family entertainer cum musical romcom. These are genres which have been widely accepted by Indian audiences. The large scale acceptance of Indian audiences of these genres further strengthened my belief to back the film.
Sweetiee Weds NRI is your first film as a producer. Could you talk about the experience of making the film?
It was a fantastic experience. Thanks to the technical expertise of Tariq Mohammad, Sada and Cyrus, things rolled out smoothly. They managed it so well that despite this being our first project, there were hardly any problems. And we were able to release the film on our own despite having no backing of any major studio. From pre to post production and later release and distribution, we handled the entire process by ourselves. This experience also helped us to understand the way in which the industry functions.
What advice would you give to people from other industries who want to venture into Bollywood?
One must thoroughly understand the economics, the way the market works and only then venture into it. It is also very important to collaborate with the right people. Our association with Grand Motion Pictures helped us to have hands-on experience and learn a lot about filmmaking and production process. Lastly, like every other business, it is very necessary to have well–defined goals.
What are your future plans?
We intend to do more projects and a couple of them are in pipeline. Our aim is to make message oriented feature films and we also are planning to make short films.
Interview By: Aditya Savnal
