AnArtizen, an organisation that produces and provides resources to help creative professionals build sustainable careers, has launched Unfair Advantage.

Conceptualised by founder Meher Sachdeva with the aim of “solving the information gap” in India’s creative industries, Unfair Advantage is an initiative through which people considering or establishing a career in music, dance, art, design, film, photography and writing can book one-on-one advisory sessions with experienced leaders with expertise in those fields.

“One thing I’ve learned from working in the creative industries is that nobody builds a career alone,” says Sachdeva. “The best artists, founders and creative leaders I know still ask for advice before making important decisions. We created Unfair Advantage to make those conversations easier to have.”

The inaugural advisor network features over 20 experts, the majority of whom belong to the music industry. They include those working in A&R (Sony Music India’s Akshay Johar and Warner Music India’s Srikant Seshadri); artist management (Collabor8’s Aoneha Tagore, Shark & Ink’s Arjun Shah, BluPrint’s Bhavya Anand, Big Bad Wolf’s Dev Bhatia, Collective Artist Network’s Dhruv Chitgopekar, first.wav’s Raghav Meattle); distribution (TuneCore India’s Leilah Zeenat); entertainment law (Tinnuts’ Rafael Pereira) and music production (Sez on the Beat).

Each of them can be booked for a 30-minute session, which is priced between Rs1,000 and Rs3,500. The advisors decide the rate at which they’d like to price their time, Sachdeva told Music Ally.

Unfair Advantage has its origins in Project Huddle, a similar initiative that was run as a month-long pilot in 2021 to gauge demand. Among the learnings from the experiment was the need for more marketing among student and artist communities and a reduction in the price points.

Why? Because the “core audience is 18-to-25 year olds deciding whether they want to enter these industries”, says Sachdeva. “We’re also seeing [interest from] those who feel they’ve plateaued or are trying to switch careers.”

The idea is for people to have a way of tapping individuals with the practical knowledge that could potentially lead to transformative moments in their advisees’ work lives. “The purpose is giving access to something that can level up your career.”