Karan Johar says Adar Poonawalla is ‘a dear family friend’ for many years

The Hindi film industry was rocked by the recent announcement that Adar Poonawalla’s Serene Productions, a millionaire businessman, had invested ₹10 billion in Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Karan talked candidly about how the agreement was made in a media interview.

“In many ways, when Adar, who’s a dear, dear friend for many years, spoke to me and we decided to come together on this, I felt it was the best decision for us. Because it was the coming together of two like-minded people, and yet someone who’d allow me my creative vision yet contribute so strongly to the growth by giving me his terrific business insight. I thought it was a great marriage of two minds. It really wasn’t a big decision for us because when it came to Adar, it was just easy. Both Apurva (Dharma Productions CEO) and I, who’ve built it, knew that he’s the best partnership for Dharma Productions and where we want to take it,” Karan said.

The filmmaker went on to say that his desire to diversify into other verticals, such as a music label and distribution network, was the driving force for the decision to sell his company’s shares. According to him, Dharma Productions is a “rather nascent” business in terms of studio operations. Only in the late 2000s did it begin with movies like I Hate Luv Storys (2010), Wake Up Sid (2009), and Kurbaan (2009).

“In a sense, our journey of producing multiple films and content has been only 15 years old. Prior to that, it was just films I’d directed that my father curated over the years, which were very few films really. There came a point in time when I felt that for our own growth, we needed the investment. We needed not to partner with anybody and contribute to our own profitability. Therein came the decision to sell stake and build a partnership with somebody,” Karan added.