Anjula Acharia is best known for being Priyanka Chopra’s manager. However, she’s also a serial investor and entrepreneur under her company A-Series Investments, where she helps bridge the gap between tech and Hollywood. She founded her first start-up, Desi Hits, “which was a platform for East and West pop culture, because I really saw this moment of these two worlds colliding in music and culture,” she tells POPSUGAR. After facing racism in her childhood and adolescence, she wanted to propel proper representation of South Asians in the media and create that connection between both cultures.
“I remember when I was in England, and Jay-Z jumped on that song with Punjabi MC . . . it was like a real moment, everyone in London playing that song with their windows down . . . and we suddenly became part of the culture,” she says. That was the moment that made her realize Desi Hits was worth creating. The platform has since helped artists like Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, and Sean Paul get into the South Asian market, and even facilitated the remix collaboration of “Jai Ho” with The Pussycat Dolls.
Founding Desi Hits was the seed that led her to bring Chopra to the American market. After watching Chopra in a music video for a 2005 Bollywood movie called “Bluffmaster!,” Acharia knew that the star had to make her debut in the American music scene. “I found out that two Indian producers I was working with, Salim and Sulaiman, had just recorded a demo with Priyanka, and I asked them to send it to me and they said yes. And I sent it to Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder of Interscope Records, and he goes, ‘She can sing.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s sign,’ and the rest is history,” she says.
Acharia raves about Chopra’s creativity and talent. “I love my relationship with Pri because she just surprised me every day,” she says. After Chopra released a few songs like “In My City” and “Exotic” in the 2010s, her music career wasn’t taking off, so Acharia decided to pivot to TV and utilize Chopra’s 20 years’ worth of acting experience. “You really have to anticipate pop culture, and to do so you have to listen to the consistent conversations at the watercooler or at dinner tables or in cafes, and look for consistency, look for the themes that people are talking about,” she says, noting that this was a time when shows with diverse female leads were taking over.
She also applied this same mindset to her own portfolio and became an early investor in start-ups like Classpass and Olipop. Throughout her years in entrepreneurship, she has learned so much, she says — whether it’s honing in on a problem that needs to be solved or noticing trends in the culture. But her biggest lesson is to be open-minded. “Your mind should be like a parachute, it only functions when it’s open. I’ve just learned to stay open-minded and listen and see opportunities,” she says, explaining she’s never really believed in a five-year plan. Acharia adds, “What I am is someone who sees opportunities and is not blind to them. I have no idea what opportunities will come to me tomorrow, but I do believe that an opportunity will come to me tomorrow, and I’ll jump on if it feels like the right thing.”
Although Acharia balances managing Chopra and being on top of her investment portfolio, she loves to spend her free time catching up on her favorite TV shows, going on walks to embrace nature, and traveling. Ahead, she gave us the rundown on some of her favorite products, including an Aesop lotion and Away luggage.