JMI Alumni Aparna Purohit: Leading Amazon Prime’s Indian Content

Having started her career working under directors like Aparna Sen and
Naseeruddin Shah, Purohit realized that she wasn’t going to get a ‘Director’s Debut’ anytime soon, so she decided to move on to casting and later production. She started working with Sony TV as an executive producer for shows like CID and Fear Factor. But doing this didn’t make the cut for Purohit, and she moved back to film and worked for UTV Motion Pictures. It was here, at UTV, which would proceed to create some great movies of the late 2000s, that Purohit understood her qualities of filtering through loads of contents and digging into the procedure of which director would be most appropriate for a specific story, amassing the production and remaining with the film through its exhausting yet compensating passage, from word to screen.

She then joined Reliance Entertainment in its starting years where she
produced a number of films in languages apart from Hindi, which won her few nominations for National Film Awards. Post this she moved to NFDC (2010) as a consultant where she worked for the Film Bazaar. In late 2010, Purohit joined Mumbai Mantra Media (Mahindra Group). She worked for the collaboration with the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab. Purohit spent several years at the Sundance India Lab and was instrumental in raising projects like Margarita With A Straw, Masaan and Umrika.

After a successful association with them, Aparna went on to produce a film based talk show Jaane Pehchaane with Javed Akhtar for EPIC television. In the winter of 2015, Purohit received a phone call asking her whether she would be interested in a position to head creative development. It was Amazon Prime. She then went on to work with Zoya Akhtar and made the web series ‘Made in Heaven’ and worked with multiple directors, namely – Nitya Mehra, Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar, and Prashant Nair. This series got a lot of positive reviews and some constructive criticism as well.

The industry soon started to respond enthusiastically as Purohit weaved
beautiful stories into the screenplay and won the hearts of not just Indian
Prime viewers but of those all around the world. Made in Heaven, The Family Man and Four More Shots Please! generated tremendous buzz and so did Patal Lok, the latter was also criticized. Purohit has made her way through the film industry, learning through her diverse experiences working with the heavy weights of the film and media industry.

Khushi Raizada is a student pursuing Literature from Lady Shri Ram College for Women

Edited by: Rutba Iqbal

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.