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Industrial Identity in an Era of Reform >> 75

released all over the world with 635 prints and holds the distinction of being
the highest grossing Indian film in the UK and the USA.”
Here is a “second-generation industry kid,” the profile suggests, who is
leading the way for Bollywood to envision a transnational audience. Even as
Karan Johar is positioned as the individual now in charge of Dharma Pro-
ductions and moreover as one who has the skills as well as the social and
cultural capital in the film industry to produce films with the most sought-
after actors, there is a recognition that this might not be sufficient in a chang-
ing media landscape. The profile then draws our attention to Karan Johar’s
managerial acumen and willingness to professionalize his family-run com-
pany: “In order to take Dharma Productions into the future, Karan Johar
embarked on producing films for independent directors under his banner.”
Tracing Karan Johar’s successes as a producer who backed films such as
Dostana (Friendship, dir. Tarun Mansukhani, 2008), which sparked debates
about homosexuality in India, Dharma Productions is defined as a company
that is “unafraid to raise issues that are less discussed” and that strives to
“push the envelope thematically.”
Overall, what the website reveals is the construction of a hybrid indus-
trial identity, one that strives to strike a balance between presenting a pro-
fessional and corporatized image while maintaining its position as a com-
pany led by an individual (Karan Johar) who occupies an important position
within Bollywood’s powerful social network. It emphasizes, in other words,
the ability to move back and forth between the corporate world and one
in which interpersonal relations continue to be valued just as much as (if
not more than) written agreements and contracts. Dharma Productions’s
shift from being a family-run production banner ensconced within mer-
cantile circuits of capital in Bombay, in which a father-son team produced
and directed a film every two or three years, to becoming a corporatized
production company in which the charismatic Karan Johar makes every
decision yet has expanded his company’s operations to produce a range of
films involving a number of writers and directors, illustrates one key tra-
jectory that small-scale companies have taken since 2000 (see Appendix 1
for profiles of other key Bollywood companies and their development since
this time). The profile thus gives us a sense not only of Dharma Produc-
tions’ industrial identity but also how this hybrid identity and flexible struc-
ture have enabled a family-run, small-scale company to stake a claim in
Bollywood.
Mapping this phase of transition gets all the more complex when we
move beyond large-scale corporations like UTV and family businesses like
Dharma Productions to consider production companies like The Factory.